


The Truth Between Wands and Zee

by D_OShae



Series: Wizarding World War of the Z [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 23:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14147292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_OShae/pseuds/D_OShae
Summary: For five years the world struggled against the zombie outbreak, and the living are not winning. To stem the tide against the assault, it will take brave people on all sides to overcome centuries of distrust. The old and the new need to unite. Secrets must be revealed if humanity wants any chance survive.





	1. Chapter 1

The order came during the preparation for the second New York offensive. Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins did not like to be be disturbed during planning meetings, but the tone of the missive delivered to her presented an order as well odd wording. The wording got her. She read it several times while field commanders listed their complaints regarding the previous failed attempt to retake the massive city, and she missed an important point directed at her.

“Colonel Jenkins,” General Weyland said her name sharply. “Colonel Jenkins! Lieutenant Colonel Natalie Jenkins do you plan on answering the fucking question?”

“Pardon?” Colonel Jenkins said and jerked her head up.

Eyes bore into her from every part of the table, especially the medical services staff. She glanced around, yet did not do so in an apologetic manner.

“I'm being reassigned,” she told collective command council.

“The fuck you are!” Weyland barked at her.

“CENTCOM, General Reese, and Secretary Mantouska would say otherwise. I leave this afternoon, providing we can get a transport out to the airstrip.”

“Where the hell are they sending you and why the hell didn't they confer with me? Did they forget we're planning a major fucking push to retake Staten Island?” Her commanding officer shouted across the room.

No one blinked or moved. When Weyland lost his cool, anyone who tried to temper him would suffer. The current state of planning and the inability of military to push back the ever-growing horde of zee made the situation tense. However, she held the message in her hand, faced her senior officer for a moment, and then looked down.

“Lieutenant Colonel Natalie Jenkins, Forward Command, US East Coast Medical and Mission Operations, required for medical investigation at Sub-Asian Joint Medical Command – Epidemiological Research...”

“Stop!” General Weyland bellowed while his face glowed red. “Go pack. You're done here.”

A faint murmur ran through the room.

“Enough! Shelby, go get Colonel Price and tell him he needs to be here five minutes ago! Jenkins, you should be gone already! Dismissed!”

Colonel Jenkins did not wait to be told a second time. She scooped up her her briefing package, handed it to the major sitting next to her and asked it be given over to Colonel Price. All the while Weyland glared at her, his green-brown eyes glowed with anger as though she purposefully got assigned to a new detail. She felt for the man and understood the tremendous pressure he faced in trying to come up with an alternative to using small-yield nuclear devices to cleanse the city. No one forgot Mumbai, and the London solution did not sit well with anyone either. Once she transitioned her meeting materials, Natalie Jenkins gathered her briefcase and quickly departed the planning room.

Men and women saluted her as she quickly walked through and from the command building to the barracks. The converted apartment building meant she got her own small apartment and no bunkmates. Along the way she keep re-reading the order. Her eyes kept returning to two specific words: source determination. Natalie felt a bit of relief Weyland stopped her from reading the entire message since that would constitute a breach of both protocol and security. While the man often led with his temper, no one ever doubted the extensive knowledge in his head. Only the medical staff present would even begin to glean some sort of understanding about the order from what little she read aloud. The order intrigue her.

“Shit! I have bug out in less than three hours!” The woman complained to no one as she increased the pace and length of her stride.

Little more than an hour later Natalie stood amid a pile of clothing and equipment she thought might come in handy. Her neck ached as she listened again to yet another diatribe through her cell phone. Because of her status in military medical, she got granted one of the secure Iridium phones and tried not to abuse the privilege. At the moment the voice on the other end nearly scorched the ear piece.

“Damn it, Nat, for how long? Why did they give you such short notice? Didn't they know you due for R-and-R rotation in three weeks once the new offensive pans out?”

“Dillon, why are you yelling at me? I just got the order today,” she replied and tried to sound calm. “It's from CENTCOM, and it did not provide any other details except I have try and get to the new Scotch Plains airstrip in the next couple of hours. They even got a car on stand-by for me.”

The sound of heavy breathing came through the phone.

“Dillon, I... this could be important. I think it might go back to the work I was doing late last year.”

“Oh,” Dillon blurted in surprise. “I thought the R-and-D got shifted to Colorado?”

“It did.”

Natalie tried to fold clothes while she talked and did a poor job of it.

“Nat, is this virology?”

She paused for a second, tossed the undershirt into her rucksack, and then said: “I don't know. Remember when I said there weren't any specific details?”

“They don't issue orders like that,” her fiance railed.

“Unless it's beyond TS, Dil... and I think this is, so please don't ask me to speculate over phone,” Natalie pleaded with him.

Another moment of silence ensued.

“If it's that classified, you know we won't be able to talk, and the wedding...”

“Goes on hold... again,” she interjected. “Why can't we just do a civil service and then fake the ceremony later when this mess is settled?”

“Does that mean you think we're winning?”

“Do you think we're winning?”

Neither answered the other's question. Natalie sat on the edge of her bed and small tower of books fell over. She swore.

“What?” The man on the other end inquired.

“My reading list just collapsed,” she informed him. “And more than one slid between the wall and bed.”

“Use the hockey stick to fish them out from under it.”

“Still in the hall closet?”

“That's where I left it,” he rejoined. “Nat, any idea how long this is going to last?”

“Are you even listening to me, Dillon?” Natalie grumbled in a dangerous manner as she stood, paced, and then aimed for the hallway closet.

“Sorry, sorry. Short message. Strange order. No details. Got it,” Dillon quickly rambled out the correct response.

“I'll call as soon as I find out the schedule.”

“Okinawa security might not let you, you know?”

“How did you…?” She burbled and grabbed another tee-shirt to fold and ignored the scattered books.

“Nat, please. Okinawa didn't fuck around when the outbreak started, and it's about the only secure medical facility left in full operation,” Dillon chastised her. “Think about it: you'll be in the only zee-free zone I know of.”

“And just a short underwater walk away from one of the most densely pack zee infestations on the planet,” Natalie countered. “Safe and zee-free are relative terms, Dil, and you know that.”

Her rebuttal appeared to give him pause for a few moments, but Dillon recovered by asking: “Are you going to be in Naha or Kadena?”

“Joint MEDCOM is in Kadena, so I guess that is where I'll be, but... remember, they didn't give me specifics. I could wind up anywhere... even Japan.”

“Not Japan, too many hot spots and it's looking worse by the day, and...”

When Dillon's intermission lasted far longer than she expected, Natalie asked: “Dillon, what are you thinking?”

“Variant,” he quietly answered.

An involuntary shudder ran through Natalie's body. The supposed virus named solanum already branched into five supposed main variants causing the zee effects to alter slightly, but significantly, in different areas of the world. No one could pinpoint the cause of the variants. Natalie desperately hoped she would not be part of a team identifying another. Zee One, Zee-Tomsk, Zee-Lagos, Zee-Dehli, and Zee-Bogota already produced child variants, and she did not think the world needed yet another infectious zee virus with which to contend. It made fighting the masses of the horrid creatures all the more difficult.

“Please don't say that,” she begged, inhaled deeply, and moved on. “Okay, listen, I've still got a ton of packing to do and I need to race to the air field. Their providing transport, but... lot to do, Dillon.”

“I know, and thanks for calling instead of sending an email,” Dillon rejoined

“Come on. I couldn't send you an email without violating protocol...”

“Baton Rouge…”

“That's not fair, and it's not in the same league as this!” Natalie huffed.

Dillon snickered.

“Remind me to lock you outside of the barriers when I get back.”

“Cold, Nat. That is just cold, and right before our wedding,” Dillon lamented.

“Which reminds me: you're in charge of planning again, and please don't deviate from the plan unless it absolutely, one-hundred percent necessary... except to maybe put it off again for a couple of months,” she reminded her fiance.

“Why do you get all the breaks?”

“I'm hanging up now,” Natalie told him and refused to take the bait.

“I love you, Colonel Jenkins.”

“I love you, Dr. Cree,” she replied with real affection. “Don't forget I've got to kill the line first or you'll never make a call on that cell 'til I call again.”

“Be safe, Nat. Stay guarded. Stay alert,” the man instructed her.

“Be safe, be alert, and stay guarded. Bye.”

“Bye.”

She pressed the off button and the call ended. The Iridium phone suddenly felt very heavy in her hand. Natalie feared her wedding plans would again be moved back, and this time Dillon might actually follow through on his threat to refuse to set a date until after she got discharged from the military. Given her record in epidemiology, pathology, and virology, she doubted the US Army Medical Corps would let her go without a serious fight. Since the zee infestation, as they called it, spun out of control, the military got permission to use a limited form of conscription on personnel deemed essential and irreplaceable. Natalie never fought the two conscription orders she received since she firmly believed her skills better served humankind under the current circumstances.

“At least it makes packing easier. It's just uniforms,” she said as she stowed the phone in her briefcase and returned to folding and packing clothing.

The only upside to a thirty-one hour flight came in the fact she could legally take sedatives to sleep once she read through the limited amount of briefing material given to her on the plane. The cargo plan carried essential medical supplies and thus the stops in Bismarck and Juneau caused the extended flight time. She would arrive in Okinawa in the morning, and Natalie wanted to adjust her sleeping intervals to coincide with local time. The completely Spartan nature of the information presented to her worried her far more than if she needed to plow through hundreds of pages of reports. It indicated whatever detail MEDCOM gave her would be highly classified. She dared not even speculate as she sat aboard the cargo plane in the surprisingly comfortable seats. She got two full nights of sleep during the trip. That in and of itself proved a rarity.

As expected, Natalie landed at the Kadena Air Force Base. Unexpectedly she got shunted to a smaller turboprop plane. Four other people met and flew with her: three military and one civilian. The civilian acted pensive and nervous from the start in the rearmost seat. Once the plane took off, it headed in a north by northeast direction. This spiked Natalie's curiosity.

“Colonel Lange, when do I get a formal briefing?” She requested.

“Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins, you will be briefed as soon as we reach our final destination,” the older and senior woman told her, and then gave her a rueful smile. “I hate to do this to you, Natalie, but you'll understand once you do get briefed.”

“That big, Mandy?” She asked and followed her friend's informal use of names.

She and Colonel Lange knew each other from before the zee war started while she completed a virology research specialty at John Hopkins University. Amanda Lange actually talked her into joining the Army with an insinuation that it would dovetail her straight into the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. Natalie swallowed the sales pitch hook, line, and sinker. Her path to a much desired appointment at the CDC seemed open until the first reports of a strange epidemic began to surface. Once it became clear the epidemic turned into a pandemic and the full horror of what the human race faced surfaced, everyone's career path changed. Natalie could not bring herself to leave the Army when it needed every specialist it could find.

“Colonel Jenkins, please refrain from asking direct questions as this stage,” the younger man, Captain Joshua Nesbit, leaned forward and said.

The civilian kept staring out the window watching Okinawa pass below them. Natalie eyed him for a few moments. His dark skin looked ashen, and his lean frame appeared to come about from hunger rather than training. As she studied him, Natalie began to notice an oddity in his manner of dress. It seemed out of date, but she could not place the period. She wondered if he came from Europe. Natalie gently elbowed her senior officer and then nodded toward the man.

“Mr. Thomas, you maybe interested to know that Colonel Jenkins is one of the leading military researchers of the solanum virus...”

“Solanum virus,” the man coughed out the words in a fairly heavy English accent, and London if Natalie judged correctly. He turned his head, and his dark eyes bore into Natalie's. “Medical research, eh? Tell me Colonel... Doctor... how does a virus stimulate neural activity in a dead brain?”

The captain grunted a warning to the civilian, who appeared to totally ignore the intelligence officer. His eyes remained locked with Natalie's.

“Well, it's believed the virus acts an electro-chemical pathway between neurons in the medulla oblongata, amygdala, and the pons, and that is what allows motor function and primal drives,” she answered since nothing she said could be considered classified in any capacity. She caught the look Colonel Lange tossed in her direction as she spoke.

“Rigor mortis and decay notwithstanding then, eh?” The man called Mr. Thomas spat out the question. He never blinked

Natalie did not open her mouth. It appeared the gentleman possessed some medical knowledge, but whether cursory or detailed could not be determined. However, Mr. Thomas also gave away a hint he knew something about the virus. He zeroed in on the question that often undermined the viral agent argument: no other virus ever acted as a causative agent in cerebral functioning postmortem.

“Mr. Thomas, do you suspect some other agent is respon...”

“Natalie, not now,” Colonel Lange interrupted before Captain Nesbit could interject. “We don't have much further to go and you will get a full briefing. Mr. Thomas?”

The man shifted his line of sight to the older woman.

“Per our... agreement, please do not engage on the topic until we reach the secure location,” the woman said in a tight voice.

“Secure? Are you barmy, lady? No place is secure!”

Natalie watched the exchange. The civilian did not appear to respect military rank. Her friend and senior officer, however, maintained composure in the face of the man's hostility. Captain Nesbit sputtered a bit.

“May I remind you, sir, that Okinawa has remained free of infestation from almost the very beginning. What little outbreak they had they quarantined and eradicated within days of the first onset. I think you'll find no other location boasts the security...”

“Against the facking hundreds of millions... maybe a billion of 'em over in China? Lady, once they get a whiff of who've you got stashed here, they'll come walking under the ocean to get...”

“ENOUGH!” Captain Nesbit yelled. “This plane doesn't have classified clearance! We're less than one hour out from our next stop, and then a short drive to the compound. Whatever you think may happen would takes weeks to play out, Mr. Thomas, so we are secure as secure can be. Please keep your mouth shut until then!”

Natalie observed the man in the odd clothes. His fingers twitched in an unusual manner, and she thought she saw him mouth a word. He appeared as though he wanted to fight Captain Nesbit, but he never balled his fists. Even more than the strange order that brought her to Okinawa and back into contact with an old friend, the civilian intrigued her. Natalie wanted to know what he knew and how he knew it because the haunted look in his eyes spoke of a person who witnessed more than his fair share of terror. A hardness lurked under his lean frame, and one apparently tempered by a fierce fire.

Captain Nesbit's warning dampened all further conversation. Colonel Lange handed her another package of material to peruse, but Natalie knew all of the data it contained. Years of studying field reports gave her a keen eye in discerning the important bits often hidden in plain text. This did nothing more than to fuel her already insatiable curiosity regarding the situation. The forty minutes to it took to fly to the undisclosed airstrip near Nagato proved otherwise uneventful. Once they landed and luggage got secured from the cargo hold of the plane, the group got shunted into an armored Humvee. The vehicle always gave Natalie a feeling of claustrophobia and uneasiness as she believed it marked them as a viable target. It stunned her to see a special seat attached in the rear of the Humvee and the civilian go to it without being asked.

“Mandy?” Natalie whispered and jerked her head in the direction of the seat.

“Briefing, Nat,” her friend gave the only response she likely would receive.

As happened in the plane, Captain Nesbit reminded them not to talk about classified information. Thus, the six people, if the driver got included, did not say a word to one another. The silence in the transport startled her. Not one of the radios remained active. She stared at the vehicle console and noted all the deactivated electronics. Recent experience told her not to ask.

It took the sextet twenty minutes of driving down rather normal looking and unpopulated roads before they reached the first security checkpoint. The fortified cinder block security station provided the only gap in the heavy gauge chain-link fence, or rather the three levels of chain-link fence. With the exception of the civilian, everyone produced their military identification. Natalie also needed to produce her transfer orders. Captain Nesbit spoke for the civilian who only gave his name: Dean Thomas from Woolsley-on-the-Hampton in the United Kingdom. When Natalie glanced at her senior officer, Colonel Lange simply shrugged and hinted she never heard of the locale either.

The process got repeated two more times at similar checkpoints as they approached a line of low buildings painted a nondescript blue-gray color. Natalie understood that from the air the buildings would be very difficult to see and difficult to target by visuals alone. Never before did she enter a secure a location of the same like. Her role as a research scientist often allowed her access to highly sensitive areas, but those paled in comparison to her current experience. When at last they rolled up to a building that look identical to the rest, Natalie also noticed a complete absence of people on the walkways. In fact, other than a few guards, she saw no one. The mix of excitement and trepidation brewing in her gut made her fidget.

The quintet exited the Humvee, and that then drove off and disappeared. A man came out the building, saluted the gathering, and walked up to the most senior officer. Dressed in the same camouflage duty uniform, the man stood out form the others military personnel who continued to wear dress uniforms.

“Colonel Lange, welcome back,” he said in a barely formal manner.

“Major Garner, good to see you again,” the colonel replied. “You know Captain Nesbit.”

“Sir,” Nesbit returned and saluted the man.

“Charlie,” Major Garner intoned the name and held out a hand, and received a solid handshake for his efforts. 

“By reputation you would know Lieutenant Colonel Natalie Jenkins,” her friend introduced her.

“Ma'am,” the major said and saluted.

Natalie returned the gesture and then held out a hand. The man accepted it and smiled. She returned that gesture as well.

“Big fan of your work in renal pathogenic load vectors. Makes early detection easier,” Major Garner complimented her.

“Wait a second,” Natalie said and grinned wider. “Gerald Garner from First Division Medical Advance? Nuclear biology?”

“The same, ma'am,” he answered and smirked.

“Well paint me surprised and happy! I've been looking for any excuse to run into you and exchange notes.”

“You've been on our list for a while, ma'am, and I'm glad you finally made it out this way.”

“When did you get assigned...”

“Look, you can snog all you want later, but I'd be a bit more pleased if I got some serious concrete between me and the outside world,” Dean Thomas curtly interrupted.

“He has a point,” Captain Nesbit sheepishly concurred. “Colonel Jenkins and Mr. Thomas need to be shown their quarters, and we've got the first debriefing within the hour.”

“True, sorry, it's just... professional curiosity,” Major Garner half-apologized. He then spun on one heel and started walking to the unmarked building. “This is the intake and quartermaster's office. We've got your bunk assignments. Mr. Thomas, we've got a security detail for you once you get processed. It's not that we don't trust you...”

“You don't,” Mr. Thomas injected as the group passed through the single heavy blast door disguised as a regular door. “Don't blame you, really. Think I was daft, too, if I wasn't arse deep in this already. This is bloody worse than the Dark...”

“Mr. Thomas!” Captain Nesbit cut into the monologue. “There is a time and place for that conversation, this is neither. Please refrain.”

The comm unit on Major Garner's belt began to squeal even though the switch clearly showed it to be in the off position. Mr. Thomas visibly tensed, and the squealing got worse. The gaunt African-descended man leaned toward the captain. Captain Nesbit unsurprisingly held his ground.

“Listen, mate, I'm the one doing you the favor, so stop crawling up my arse. If you think I'm just going to stand around and take shite from you, then you've got another thing coming. One more time and I am out of here. Clear?” Dean Thomas said in such a threatening manner it gave everyone pause.

“Mr. Thomas, please, he means no disrespect, and what you can offer is vital to this effort if we're all going to survive,” Major Garner intoned in a conciliatory fashion. “We're just used to... following a different set of rules.”

“Your rules can get bent if he keeps it up!”

Captain Nesbit appeared angry. When the man's hand reached for an inner pocket, Major Garner jumped between them. His walkie-talkie started to scream. Both Nesbit and Thomas backed away. The civilian lowered his arm and the comm unit calmed although it continued to let out a softer high-pitched sound. Guards from further inside the building came streaming forward. Garner held up his hands, and the guards halted in their tracks.

“Mr. Thomas agreed to work with us, and we cannot treat guests this way,” the major shouted. “Tulski, take your men back.”

“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said, and the six man contingent eased back in the direction they came.

“Captain Nesbit, while I applaud your adherence to protocol, this... particular situation requires... more tact. Mr. Thomas is an invited civilian guest and application of military procedures need to be augmented.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but this installation requires...”

“Do you forget, Captain, that two of the people who helped create this base are standing with you right now?”

Captain Nesbit appeared abashed. His gray eyes lowered.

“If we go to war with one another, we all lose. Understood?” Major Garner further chastised his subordinate.

“Yes, sir,” Nesbit grudgingly acquiesced.

“Colonel Lange?” The major then differed to the senior officer.

“You're speaking my thoughts, Jerry,” Lange gamely returned. “Diligence notwithstanding, civility and courtesy are also required... from everyone.”

Natalie saw the effect the quiet words imparted. Both Nesbit and Thomas seemed to deflate a bit. She appreciated the way her friend could exude command without coming across as brusque or domineering. Amanda Lange, used to dealing with people who egos often entered a room ten feet before the person, knew how to control volatile meetings. The medical community in times of crisis often tended toward cantankerous when people held strong, educated opinions.

“Now, Major Garner if you could direct our guest and new detailee to quartermaster’s office, I'd be most appreciative. We have a debrief within the hour,” the colonel calmly reminded the group. “And, personally, I could use a bite to eat beforehand. Colonel Jenkins? Mr. Thomas? Do either of you require a meal before the meeting.

“Thanks, but I ate breakfast an hour before touchdown,” Natalie declined.

“Right, thanks, but I'm good as well,” Mr. Thomas also declined.

“Very well, I am off to the mess hall. Nat, give me a ring when you get settled. Mr. Thomas, your security personnel can take you wherever permissible on the base if you get finished early. We'll be meeting in D, level 5, and please use the causeways. We didn't spend several hundred million dollars on this place to expose anyone to unnecessary risks.”

Along with the other two officers, Natalie saluted Colonel Lange. She returned the salute. The woman smiled warmly at Dean Thomas, and the man tilted his head back in response in a sort of backward nod.

“Captain, please accompany me if you would be so kind,” Colonel Lange gave the order in a sweet tone. “We need to prepare for the meeting, and your knowledge of protocols will come in handy.”

“But Mr. Thomas...” Captain Nesbit started to complain.

“Will be with a well-trained detail who know exactly what to expect from our guest as delivered by Major Garner. Mr. Thomas is in good hands, Captain.”

Even Dean Thomas seemed surprised by the reprieve, and it took him a few moments before he bobbed his head in either agreement or appreciation. The colonel also walked over to the captain and her physical proximity became noticeable. Captain Nesbit sagged a bit and looked more docile. Colonel Lange saluted once more to her junior officers, and then escorted Captain Nesbit out of the lobby. The rest watched in silence.

“Don't know how she does that,” Major Garner mumbled.

“Years and years of working with assholes, Major... and not just in the medical sense, either,” Colonel Jenkins remarked.

Major Garner burst out laughing. Dean Thomas glanced between the two of them. The major turned to the man.

“For the next little while you'll be my guest, Mr. Thomas, until we get you racked,” he said with a smirk.

“That doesn't involve ropes and horses, does it? My people got a history with that,” the civilian darkly inquired.

Natalie snorted at the off-color remark. She recalled England outlawed slavery before the United States, but the British brought the practice to the colonies early on. Racial tensions in the United Kingdom differed from the US for geographical reasons. However, the allusion to the old form of torture seemed strangely out of place given the circumstances.

“I can attest to the fact the US Army doesn't use the rack,” she said.

“At least not where anyone can see,” the dark-skinned man quipped almost under his breath.

Natalie opened her mouth, but Major Garner shot her a look. She closed her mouth and simply nodded. She realized an unusual exchange took place, yet she could not figure out the entire scope of it. She hoped the debriefing would shed greater light on the civilian. Since Natalie got a tip not to respond, she simply nodded her head.

“This way, Mr. Thomas, and I think you'll find the accommodations more than adequate,” the major stepped into the awkward silence. “Colonel Jenkins, you can proceed to the duty desk, and they can assist you. A guide will be waiting for you as well.”

“Thank you, Major. See you at the briefing, and I hope we can meet informally later. There's a lot I would like to discuss with you,” Natalie responded.

“Oh, I can guarantee we'll meet later, ma'am!”

Major Garner saluted, she returned it, and the man departed with the civilian through the only door other than the entrance. She stood alone in the lobby and suddenly felt awkward. With that, Lieutenant Colonel Natalie Jenkins went to find out what accommodations got prepared for her.

A comfortable suite of rooms awaited, and it made Natalie feel like she checked into a rather nice hotel. A central sitting room dominated with a large desk and office chair sitting in one corner, two doors led to the bathroom and bedroom, and the small kitchen got nested at the far end of the central room near the dining table. All in all, Natalie thought, she could live there for quite a while in relative comfort. Once she thought it, the notion made her heart sink. Instinct told her the rooms would be her home for a goodly amount of time.

The knock at the door announced her presumed commanding officer arrived for a short pre-meeting. With fifteen minutes to spare before the main meeting, Natalie arranged a dozen questions in order of importance in her mind. After opening the door, the two made a silent exchange. Amanda Lange rolled her eyes as if to comment on the earlier part of the day. The medium-brown orbs sparkled with both intelligence and wit. Natalie felt safe within the presence of her old friend.

“This is a suite, Mandy, so does that mean I'm here to stay for a while?” Natalie inquired as he let her guest into the rooms.

Since arriving, both changed into duty fatigues instead of dress uniforms. Natalie understood the meeting to be a working session, so dress greens could be put away. Seeing the senior officer dressed in the same manner reassured her.

“That depends on what we learn in the next couple of hours, but that doesn't matter. Your rank and reputation entitled you to this. Besides, you deserve some comfort after getting pulled halfway around the world,” Colonel Lange said as she walked through the room and sank into the armchair facing the short end of the coffee table.

“Can you at least give me some clue as to what I'm about to face in the meeting?” Natalie requested as she sat on the long sofa diagonally from her friend.

“Yes, but I won't. You need to hear this straight through from the source. I don't want to prejudice you at the start.”

Natalie gazed at the woman. Amanda's reply proved uncharacteristic in many regards, especially since Natalie carried the highest security clearance available. She immediately amended the notion to clearances of which she knew. Although two years passed since they last worked together, she thought Amanda trusted her more. However, as she stared at her friend, she saw the matter of trust did not really factor into the equation.

“Is this really that important?” She inquired.

“This changes everything we know and understand about the zee, Nat. I... let me say it took me a long time to both accept and recognize the importance of this,” the woman told her in a quiet voice. “Oh, and you've achieved a new security level when you got here. You'll get the non-disclosure forms at the meeting, but... Natalie, you need to take this more seriously than anything you've encountered yet.”

“Mandy, I've studied corpses that were trying to kill and eat me in an attempt determine how... what allowed them to continue after death. I've lost too many friends to the infection and watched them turn into the same unstoppable... almost unstoppable killing machines. It doesn't get any more serious than that!”

“Want to bet?”

The confident, soft statement made Natalie sit back in her seat. As a rule, medical professionals tended to avoid betting over outcomes since one could never cover all of the factors. That her friend uttered the challenge gave Natalie pause. Over half of her question list fell away. Amanda sat forward.

“Nothing I could tell you in advance can prepare you for what you're about to learn. This, Nat, is unprecedented,” Amanda said in low tone.

Few people could influence Natalie's thinking with such cryptic remarks. Yet her faith in knowing Colonel Amanda Lange personally sent for her made all the difference. In less than two seconds she made up her mind.

“Where do I sign?” Natalie flatly stated.

“This one caries a treason clause.”

“Blue or black ink?”

“I knew I could count on you!” Colonel Lange gently cheered. “Nat, please, please, please believe me when I say this is going to blow your mind like nothing else you've ever discovered!”

“More than dead people shambling around instead of lying in the ground? More than all those tests I ran on solanum?” Natalie skeptically countered.

“That is just the tip of the iceberg.”


	2. Chapter 2

In a room three levels deeper in the earth no one spoke as they read through the non-disclosure and security agreements. Each new page threatened more dire consequences than the last. Natalie never read such strict conditions in all her military career. When she got to the clause that said all security provisions and requirement remained in place even after leaving the military including the possibility of a death sentence for treason, the stakes entirely changed. Natalie glanced up at her commanding officer.

“Told you this was serious,” Colonel Lange mumbled.

Several of the half-dozen medical officers in the room looked up at the colonel. Amanda only knew Colonel Lange, the five others of various rank and from different branches seemed shocked by the required agreements. Colonel Lange scanned the assembled.

“You are not required to sign. If you chose not to, then you will be escorted from the briefing and we will return you to your original post. We have transports standing by,” she told the group.

Eyes stared at the woman, but then all heads bowed, including Natalie's, and the sound of pens scratching against paper rose into the air. Natalie appended her name to the four lines and lost count of the number to times she initialed separate clauses. When she finished, she returned the package to the opaque envelop and slid it forward.

“Seal and sign across the flap, Colonel Jenkins,” the security officer instructed her.

Natalie complied. She saw others copy her motions. In short order the entire squad of people completed the ritual. They sat in a what appeared to be a training room with several rows of long desks. The group, however, sat only in the first row facing a screen illuminated by a white square. It seemed it would be a multiple-format presentation. As soon as the security officer departed with signed documents, Colonel Lange stood up and in front of the group.

“Behind that door,” and she jerked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the door behind her, “is the reason for these extreme measures. Although this facility got built for other purposes, it is being re-purposed to explore a new avenue of assault against the zee. Each of you represents some of the finest medical R and D minds in the different military branches. Once this briefing is completed, you will have a new task... and probably one of the most important we've ever undertaken.”

Colonel Lange never, as far as Natalie knew, gave herself over to hyperbole. Her pronouncements tended toward the conservative at best in the past. The deportment of her statements made Natalie sit up up, and she saw others reacting the same. The senior officer let her words hover over them for a few moments longer.

“You are going to be introduced to two people. They will tell you some of their story. You will not believe them at first. After the demonstration, you'll probably want to sit and think for a couple of years, but will only give you two hours to absorb the news. Afterward we will have a second meeting where you will hear the how their story and our current worldwide conditions are related. Any questions?” The colonel asked in what sounded like a normal voice.

No one raised a hand or spoke a word. Following ten seconds to make certain, Colonel Lange stood and nodded to the guard by door to the right of the screen. The guard opened it, whispered something into the portal, and then two people emerged. Natalie instantly recognized the fairly tall, slender African-Englander. He wore new newer clothes and looked more refreshed. Behind him and actually holding Dean Thomas' hand came a woman of clear Indian or Pakistani descent. Dressed in blue jeans, sturdy hiking shoes, and a thin sweater, she looked as if she came straight out of suburbia. Her dark brown eyes, however, scanned the assembled several times. The two silently entered and went to the two chairs situated on the right of the table where Colonel Lange positioned herself. The each took a seat. The never let go of one another.

Colonel Lange remained seated while she said: “It my privilege to introduce you to Padma Bray and Dean Thomas. Both hail from England. Mrs. Bray comes to us by way of Senghennydd – did I pronounce that correctly?”

“You did,” Mrs. Bray quietly affirmed in a lilting English accent. “And please call me Padma. You're making me sound like my mother-in-law.”

Several people snickered at her comment, and Padma Bray grinned a bit.

“Senghennydd,” the colonel continued and did not pronounce the name the same way the second time, “is located north of Cardiff...”

A hush fell over the room.

“And we all know what happened there. Padma and her family tried to get out right as the zee stormed the town, and... well, as I said, we all know what happened there”

Natalie watched the woman as her commanding officer spoke. Padma Bray lowered her head and looked to be struggling to hold her emotions in check. Her long black hair fell partially over her face. Given what Natalie heard and the pictures she saw, the massacre in and aroudnd Cardiff ran to the extreme. The casualty rate topped eighty-seven percent.

“Her firsthand knowledge of a zee attack is, like it is for most of us... shocking,” Amanda Lange gently concluded.

Padma nodded her head.

“Some of you already met Mr. Dean Thomas, who worked in London...”

“Actually, I was stationed in Bromley when the attacks started and was on one of the last boats out of Sheerness when London burned,” he dryly supplied the correct information.

Again, the group sat in stunned silence. Like most major cities, London got ravaged by the zee horde that developed with the city confines. The ancient layout of the streets made defending the city difficult. The British, realizing London could not be saved, firebombed it to take out as many of the corrupted as they could. Half a year before when India used a small yield nuclear weapon in Mumbai for the same reason, waves of irradiated zee swarmed along the west coast of the country and added untold ills to the already bad situation. China did the same and suffered a much worse fate. The English learned from those mistakes and opted for a less hazardous route. Given the history of the United Kingdom during the Second World War, and London in particular, firebombing the city became horrifically ironic.

“What a pity,” Colonel Lange said with real emotion. “I always loved London.”

“No time for weeping over that and every other bullocked campaign. These... what'd you call the slaggers? Zee? You mean zombies?” Mr. Thomas said and inquired. Everyone nodded. “Right. You really don't know what you're up against with these zee. They're inferi of sorts and...”

“Mr. Thomas, you're getting ahead of yourself,” Colonel Lange redirected him with a light voice.

“Yeah, yeah.”

The man shut up and slumped back in his chair. Natalie again saw the anger and fight in Dean Thomas. If he remained in the London area long enough to witness the bombing, then he saw considerable action and survived against staggering odds. Her respect for the man quintupled in that instant.

“I think we need to skip the chase and get right to the point, Padma and Mr. Thomas. Please, tell these doctors the most salient fact about yourself,” the colonel requested.

“What? Solanum?” Mr. Thomas blurted.

“No, nitwit: salient meaning most important right now,” Padma instructed the man.

“What? You mean...” and then he paused.

Padma sat upright and looked straight at the group sitting behind the tables that separated them and said: “Dean's a wizard, and I'm a witch... and not like that Wizard of Oz nonsense, but a proper wizard and witch.”

The shock that rolled through the collection of military personnel figuratively echoed. Natalie stared at the duo, and then at her friend sitting along the civilians. Amanda barely gave her a wink and remained focused on the two from England. Padma Bray and Dean Thomas, for their part, sat with stern expressions. After more than a few moments lapsed. Mr. Thomas slowly began to shake his head.

“God, working with muggles is such a pain in the arse,” he rumbled.

“Dean, behave!” Padma railed at him. She then fixed the assembled with a look. “You don't believe me. I get that. None of you ever do right away, but what I said is the truth. Witches and wizards have existed alongside you since... since forever, I think. After the middle ages and that bloody awful period with James the First and what you lot did in Salem, we learned to keep a low profile... for the most part.”

“You mean an actual wizard and witch? Finger wiggling, hocus pocus, rabbit out of the hat...”

“Piss off, you blighter!” Dean roared at a major from the Marine Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense Mobile Medical Detachment, one of the newest occupational specialties for that particular branch of the military.

Against all probability, a stick of wood suddenly appeared in the hand of of the man. Everyone on one side of the table threw disbelieving looks at Dean Thomas. The stick trembled a bit.

Then in a surprisingly clear and steady voice, Dean said: “Aqua eructo!”

From nowhere a jet of clear water lanced across the space and struck the marine major square in the chest. He got blasted backwards out of his chair. Water sprayed in all directions, landing on the other medical personnel who tried to scrambled out of the way. A small scene of chaos ensued. Through it all Colonel Amanda Lange sat in her chair and simply watched.

“Dean, knock it off! We need these people to be on our side!” Padma yelled at her friend.

The water jet vanished, and left behind a thoroughly soaked military doctor sprawled on the floor. Large puddles of water gathered around the man who sputtered and hollered. Natalie and the others who also got very wet as well, stood gaping at their colleague. They slowly turned to looked at the two British civilians.

“Mr. Thomas, is there some way you could, perhaps, please remove the mess?” Colonel Lange asked in pleasant voice.

“What about the twit?” Dean snarled and pointed his stick at the doused major.

“No, I think being a little wet right now is what he needs.”

A smirk flickered across Natalie's mouth.

“Exhalatus aquae,” Mr. Thomas intoned and aimed his stick at the large areas of standing water. The liquid hissed, bubbled, and disappeared.

“What the fuck is going on here!” The marine shouted as he jumped to feet, flinging droplets of water everywhere. “What kind of hose is that?”

“It's not a hose, Major Savini: it's a wand,” Colonel Lange said in a contemplative manner.

Major Savini looked as though Colonel Lange slapped him. His mouth flopped open as he realized Lange did not joke. She kept her gaze level and steady. Slowly she shifted it from one person after another. When the stare settled on Natalie, she understood in a second her friend meant everything in complete seriousness. Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins slowly mouth a single question.

“Padma, would you be so kind as to apparate to the other side of the room?” Amanda Lange asked the woman.

Padma Bray silently stood. All eyes remained fixed on her. Her mouth trembled a bit. Then in a combined hissing and popping sound, the woman of Hindi descent vanished as it looked as though she got folded out of existence. A second later the same sound erupted at the far end of the room. Padma Bray stood watching the group.

“Colonel Lange, this... what new technology is the military using to... do... this?” Another lieutenant colonel from the Air Force asked, and his voice quavered a small amount.

“Randy, this is not technology. It's not a sleight of hand or a parlor trick,” Lange replied in a calm, nearly serene manner. “Using forces we know next to nothing about, Padma literally transported herself across the room. They call it apparition, and I think almost all magic users...”

“Give me a fucking break, Colonel Lange!” Major Savini bellowed. “Magic? Magic users? We're supposed to sit here and believe – especially after signing some of the strictest terms I've ever agreed to – that these people are... are... magicians.”

“Piss off,” Dean Thomas spat at the man and half-raised the wand. “I'm a wizard, and get it right. I won't have anything to do with silly card tricks and sawing a person in half!”

“Mr. Thomas,” Colonel Lange said his name with a bit of ice in her tone. “And Major Savini, I don't care what you do or do not believe, but if you ever swear at me like that again, we'll see how thirty days in the brig affects what you believe.”

“Ma'am,” Major Savini snapped to attention while his cheeks glowed red.

“Natalie, would you be...”

A hiss and pop later Padma returned to her original position. The military personnel standing on the other side of the table row from the two magic users gaped at the woman. Padma turned to the leader of the meeting.

“My apologies, Padma, for leaving you standing there,” the only non-stunned colonel said.

“I thought maybe they'd like to see it in the other direction as well,” Padma muttered.

“Excellent idea,” Amanda Lange rejoined in a near happy tone. “Now, Natalie, please bring your chair over here, and which of you is better at shape-changing an object?”

“She has better control in transfiguration. Got perfect OWLs in it if I remember rightly,” Mr. Thomas offered.

“Come off it, Dean, after the Dumbledore's Army we were all pretty good at it,” his friend countered.

“Not like you or Hermione. Core, but you two can sling it around!”

The others watched and got a good display that the man and woman knew each other going years and years back. Natalie, despite the shock of what she heard and witnessed, automatically picked out choice pieces of information about which to inquire at a later time. The mention of an army got her attention, and it seemed to affect others as well. However, the lieutenant colonel received a direct command from a superior officer and her years of training kicked into gear. Natalie began pulling her chair along the row of tables before she made a conscious decision. As she rounded the end of the row and started to draw close to the magic users, Natalie gradually became nervous. It slowly dawned on her that the two people from England quite possibly possessed power enough to overcome the entire base. Years of military training took over and she calmed in spite of what she felt. Natalie delivered the chair as ordered.

“Thanks,” Padma Bray said to her.

Natalie forced a smile onto her face and nodded once before returning to line up of officers. She dutifully waited as Padma studied the chair and Dean Thomas backed up a few feet. Padma appeared nervous.

“Do you mind of I do a dog? I can do whippets in a jiff,” the woman inquired and glanced toward the full-bird colonel directing the meeting.

“As long as it's house trained,” Lange replied with a hint of a chuckle.

The two woman grinned at one another. Natalie admired the easy demeanor of her friend, but then she remembered Amanda knew about this well before the current meeting. She wondered how long it took Colonel Lange to come to terms with the developments if, indeed, it proved to be true.

“Right. Here goes,” Padma rejoined, produced her wand from her back pocket, and carefully aimed it at the chair. Her dark eyes focused on the object. She then said in a low, stern voice: “Sede canis commuta.”

The air wavered around the tip of the wand, and the chair became a bit blurry for a moment. For a couple of seconds nothing happened. Then the chair started to bounce a bit. The round, small metal feet clacked against the resin tiles on the floor. Slowly the chromed tubing lost its shine. The seat began to arch upward and the back bent downward. Fur sprouted from the surface as the seat turned into a thin ribcage and the seat back elongated into what could only be described as a dog head. The little metal feet turned into little furred paws. A tail extruded itself from the body. In less than eight seconds the chair transformed into a greyhound-like dog with a tawny coat shot through with gray stripes.

“My family had a dog named Bessie who looked like this back when I was young,” Padma said as she smiled at the animal that nervously glanced around.

“Bloody brilliant,” Mr. Thomas mumbled and his face showed nothing but admiration.

Padma threw him a smirk.

Aside from Colonel Lange, the remaining humans stared in abject awe. The dog looked skittish, and it seemed to want to bolt from the scene. Natalie actually wanted to pet the animal. However, she decided a visibly frightened beast running loose through a medical compound would not be in anyone's best interest. Instead, she focused on the whippet as an object of curiosity like she would a new bacterial strain. Part of her mind wanted to challenge the transformation as a gimmick, yet she knew what she saw happened.

“This has to be a trick,” an army major drawled with a noticeable Texas twang. “Can't be real.”

The Air Force lieutenant colonel, the one Amanda called Randy, silently walked slowly around the table row. The dog and everyone else watched him. When he got within ten feet of the dog, and the animal visibly shook with apprehension, the man crouched down and extended one hand.

“Come here, girl. It's alright,” he cooed at the dog.

The remaining people in the room seemed to hold their breath. After looking about, the dog lowered its head, the long tail dipped between the hind legs, and it took a hesitant step toward the officer dressed in duty blues.

“Everything's fine, girl. Just take it easy, and come over here if you want,” Lieutenant Colonel Randy beckoned the animal in a calm half-whisper.

It took thirty seconds of fits and starts before the dog got close enough to the man's hand to sniff it. Randy, and Natalie realized she did not know his last name, showed a patience with animals she did not possess. Following ten more seconds of the dog sniffing his hand, it finally ducked its head lower and under the proffered appendage. The man gently rubbed her head.

“This is a real dog,” he said as though talking to the trembling canine. He then tilted his head toward Natalie and asked: “On your honor you swear you're not in on this and you really did bring a chair over?”

“I swear as officer in the United States Army and on my grandfather's good name,” Natalie replied as she raised her right hand as if taking an oath in a courtroom.

The man named Randy nodded in acceptance, glanced at Padma, and inquired: “Can you change it back into a chair from where you're standing?”

“Yes, but you need to back up at least half a foot or else part of you might change into a chair as well,” the woman agreed and warned.

“Good girl,” the lieutenant colonel said, patted the dog's head, and moved away.

“Canis referro sedes,” Padma said in the same stern voice after aiming her wand at the dog.

The air rippled between the dog and the wand. The whippet let out with a single high-pitched whimper as the process reversed. The dog changed back into a chair. Two seconds later Randy lunged toward and seized the seat.

“Good goddamn,” he rumbled as he turned the chair around in his hand. “This shit is real!”

General chaos erupted as most of the collected military officers began to yell questions at Colonel Lange and the guests. Natalie simply sat down in a chair and stared at Dean Thomas. She reviewed everything she could recall about the man since she first boarded a plane with him. Two points came to mind. First, all of the electronics remained unused during the Humvee ride from the airstrip to the base. Second, the sound Major Garner's comm unit made during the brief verbal altercation between Dean Thomas and Captain Nesbit. On top of that, it now seemed odd to her they used a turboprop plane to transport them across the island instead of a small jet. Natalie formed a quick notion, and it nagged her. She raised her hand.

“Quiet!” Colonel Lange shouted at the top of her voice fifteen seconds later. In the tiny susurration the woman managed to ask: “Natalie, you've got a question?”

People shut up and nearly every head swung in her direction. Dean Thomas just sat down and gave every indication boredom took over his mind. Natalie sat upright in her chair as if back in elementary school.

“Is this the reason none of the electronics were turned on in the Humvee and why we took a propeller plane here... and why Jerry's mic when haywire when Mr. Thomas got angry?”

Dean's head snapped upward and he stared at her. Colonel Lange did a poor job concealing a grin. Natalie did not react.

“Very observant, Nat, and, yes, the powers they control seem to interfere with our electronic equipment.”

While her commanding officer spoke, Natalie watched the reaction of their unusual guests. Dean Thomas continued with his hard stare. A strange smile flickered across the face of Padma Bray, but it did not last long. Each appeared haunted and troubled, an appropriate reaction given the worldwide situation. Natalie saw it too often on too many faces. She, herself, wore it from time to time when receiving news of the death of a family member, a friend, or a loved one. The expression on the magical woman's face, however, went deeper. More questions raised in Natalie's mind as she sat back and considered the news.

 

A general din became to take shape as the military medical officers began to talk to each other and themselves. A woman of clear Hispanic descent sat mumbling in both English and Spanish while her dark eyes flicked back and forth between the self-proclaimed witch and wizard. The color of her uniform and the insignias indicated she came from the Navy. The talking became louder, and an argument broke out between the Air Force lieutenant colonel and the Marine major.

“Alright, alright!” Colonel Lange yelled at the group. “Quiet!”

The assembled doctors and specialists did as ordered, but it seemed forced. Amanda held them with a fixed, resolute stare. She held Major Savini's eyes the longest and barely glanced at Natalie. When everyone settled even more, Colonel Lange let out with a long sigh.

“It's a lot to take in, especially for people of science like yourselves,” she began, and the woman's eyes narrowed when a couple of her subordinates began to fidget. “But this is real. We've tested it for several weeks. During those tests we also started to hear some of the stories….”

“Some?” The Air Force lieutenant colonel quickly interjected. “You mean there's more people like this?”

“Not as many as there used to be, Colonel Miller,” Amanda said, and Natalie immediately cataloged the man's name. “Their community got hit exceptionally hard and...”

“It's why we're here,” Dean Thomas jumped in. “See, you don't know what caused...”

“Mr. Thomas!” Colonel Lange said in her commanding way. “One step at a time, like we discussed. They need to absorb who and what you are first before we can move to the next... piece.”

Dean Thomas grumbled and flung his arms around his chest. He complied, and Natalie suspected it came not entirely from respect. She knew her friend could make friends with even the most recalcitrant of people, and it paved her way through the ranks, but Dean Thomas did not appear to be an overtly friendly person. That Colonel Lange managed to extend some control over him seemed impressive, Natalie fully expected Amanda to be promoted to general and often wondered what held it up. At the moment, Mr. Thomas fell into line as though a trained soldier. A new idea sprang into her head. She raised her hand.

“Save it, Natalie,” Amanda said in a softer voice. “We need to debrief first and then we can answer other questions. You need time to adjust to this news.”

“I'll say,” the Navy commander, the Hispanic woman who looked only a few years older, mumbled. Natalie recognized the service patch on her duty uniform since she routinely worked with Bureau of Medicine and Surgery officers.

Colonel Lange shot a specific look at the woman.

“In the meantime, Mrs. Bray and Mr. Thomas will get some down time while we ramp up. Understood?” Amanda told what Natalie now understood served as her personal detachment.

Various forms of agreement followed, some more military than others.

“Yes, Ma'am,” Natalie dutifully snapped and saluted, as did all but the Major Savini who focused intently on the magical people.

“Henderson, Malloy, please escort our guests wherever they need to go, but... please don't go into the labs or the operating theaters. We can't spend time replacing equipment,” she said to the guards.

Padma Bray grinned again. Dean Thomas did not change expressions. They rose and walked toward the guards who neither flinched nor relaxed. It impressed Natalie and communicated the fact the guards somehow got used to the presence of the unusual duo. She also noted the distinct lack of comm units or any other form of electronics on them. The assembled medical silently watched Bray and Thomas leave. Then, like a hydra, they all turned toward their commanding officer.

“Welcome to the club,” Amanda dolly told them. “I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. Ask Colonel Jenkins. She's known me for a good, long time.”

Several heads turned her way.

“She couldn't and wouldn't,” Natalie confirmed. “How did you discover them?”

Natalie heard and saw a number of mouths snap shut in anticipation of an answer. Colonel Lange sat down.

“They came to us right after the Seoul disaster,” she quietly informed them.

“They weren't involved, were they?” Major Savini said, and then quickly added: “Ma'am.”

“Deeply, but we didn't know it at the time. I can't even begin to calculate how many civilian and military lives they saved, and they paid a huge price for it,” the most senior officer told the group.

“Is that why the zee mass turned toward Kaesong?” The other Army medical personnel, a major from the Pacific Operations division, inquired. The small man with a half-bald head and sharp, dark eyes spoke in a clipped but direct manner.

Amanda nodded.

“But the North Koreans…!”

“Did nothing to help when this got started and tried to isolate themselves,” Colonel Miller interrupted. “Don't forget they would throw their infected into the DMZ and China!”

Natalie shuddered. She never heard a logical explanation as to why several hundred thousands zee turned north from Seoul and swarmed into North Korea. Ultimately the number of undead swelled into millions as they surged in northward. In a single month, North Korea got overrun and went permanently dark.

“The Magi led...”

“Is that what we're calling them, Ma'am?” Commander Ramirez asked.

“Got a better name?” Amanda sternly countered, and then softened. “The British variant call us muggles. The American ones... not that many survived, call us normies. I don't know who started using magi, but it stuck. It also kind of made sense once I found out what the word really means.”

She got met with silence.

“It's in the briefing pack you'll all receive in a little bit, but I wanted to answer any immediate questions you have first before giving you a break to... to take this in,” Colonel Lange stated.

“This is serious... Ma'am?” Major Savini cryptically inquired.

“As a heart attack, Savini,” and then the woman leaned forward. “In the next two days we are going to cover a lot of intel. You're going to hear a lot and most of it you might not believe, but once you start piecing it together, you'll understand why this special detachment got formed.”

“So we're a unit then, Colonel?” Lieutenant Colonel Miller queried.

“One of the singularly most specialized in the US military. You all got hand-picked for this assignment because collectively this group knows everything we know about the zee. With the addition of Bray and Thomas, that knowledge will expand and maybe, just maybe, we can figure out a way to really fight this plague,” the commanding officer said in a half-plaintive manner. “But I... damn it, the world needs you to approach this with an open mind. Stay skeptical, but open to possibilities you never dreamed might be in play.”

“Magic is real?” Major Caldwell, Natalie noticed his nameplate, muttered and stared at the ground.

“Always has been, Arliss. We just didn't know it or appreciate the fact. The witch trials of the early seventeenth century finally drove them underground... so to speak, and they learned how to be invisible without actually turning invisible. If you start to think about, you'll start to see a pattern,” Amanda answered him on a friendly, personal fashion. Natalie understood she knew the man.

“Colonel, don't they actually pose a threat? I mean, look at the power they wield,” Major Savini added.

“Lou, they are fucking terrified of us!”

Natalie watched at Major Savini's mouth fell open.

“Look, a gun is more powerful than bite, but the zee got the edge on us. How?”

“Numbers. Once the infected started to multiply, it became an exponential threat,” Commander Ramirez answered.

“Right, and we have numbers on the Magi. One of them might able to take out ten, twenty... maybe thirty of us at a time, but if they are facing thousands...”

“So their magical abilities have a limit? Is it a power limit? And what is the source of their power anyway, Mandy?” Natalie blurted as he mind churned out the questions. Ten seconds later she glanced up in surprise and said: “I mean Colonel Lange.”

“Drop it, Nat. We don't have time or room to stand on full formal protocol. The Magi don't even recognize our chains of command...”

Two people sucked in their breath in surprise.

“Why should they?” Colonel Lange questioned as her eyes swept over the assembled. “As far as they're concerned, we're something akin to the first zee they encountered, and it never went well for them.”

Dark expressions covered most of the faces. Duty uniforms of blue and green camouflage rustled. Boots slid across the floor and made soft hissing sounds.

“Ever get burned at the stake?” Amanda asked the group. “Especially when you helped more than hurt?”

Visages changed in an instant.

“But to get back to Natalie's questions: yes, they do have limits. No soldier walks around with unlimited ammo, and the same is true for them. Once they exhaust themselves, they become prone and easy targets. Maybe the best of them can hold out for longer periods, but they'd eventually fall to overwhelming numbers, and we all know about that. They fell to the zee the same way we did, but faster.”

Natalie felt her head bob up and down in agreement before she consciously decided to carry out the act. Then the last statement sank into her head, and it snapped upward. Colonel Lange's slightly weathered and wrinkled face shifted from person to person as each appeared to come to the same point. Natalie began to open her mouth. Amanda's head moved from side to side.

“Before you ask: yes, there's a connection between the magi and the zee,” Amanda said. “I see it on your faces and I can hear you thinking it. It's part of what you're going to learn this afternoon. I could tell you the story, but I can't answer your questions. Bray and Thomas are here to do that. We need to merge what they know with what you know and hopefully something will come out of the collision.”

Natalie closed her mouth. She watched as her new comrades did the same. A side thought almost distracted her. She needed to find a way to get word to Dillon and let him know the wedding would be indefinitely postponed. It seemed clear this assignment would take precedent in her life, and she hoped the personal sacrifice would be worth it. The sound of a chair scraping along the floor brought her back to the present.

“There's a stack of packets next to the door. Grab one on your way out,” Amanda told them in an authoritative voice. “Lunch mess starts at eleven hundred hours. The next briefing at thirteen hundred. Read the packet. Think about it. Get over your disbelief. We don't have time for that.”

The other officers started to stand.

“One last thing,” Colonel Lange said in a low voice. “Speak to anyone outside of this group about this, and you will be executed as soon as we find out... and we will find out.”

Natalie felt a chill sweep over her. Rarely did Amanda Lange make pronouncements even though her position and rank entitled her. Colonel Lange's demeanor, however, delivered the real punch. If she knew most of these people, and Natalie suspected Amanda Lange personally knew each and every one of them, then her threat took on deeper meaning.

“Dismissed,” the ranking colonel said.

In a silent procession the newly formed unit moved toward the exit. Each grabbed a packet. The outer covering of spun-bonded polyethylene did not make sound when touched. The opaque material guaranteed no one would see the contents. Moreover, Natalie noted the distinct absence of markings regarding the classification. She wondered what classification went beyond top secret compartmentalized information. Given the death sentence hanging over their heads should the information leak, Natalie realized the packages did not need to be marked. Lack of distinction served two purposes: firstly, it placed the onus of protection of the holder and, secondly, no one would ever guess the supremely sensitive nature of the materials. Natalie felt her hand clutch more tightly to the package.

The group marched in silence through the hallway. One by one they split off and headed to their quarters. Finally only Colonel Lange and Major Caldwell remained. It seemed each branch got their own wing for quarters. Natalie saw her short hallway entrance approach. Before she could move toward it, a hand gently restrained her.

“Are you okay, Nat?” Amanda asked.

“Let's say you underestimated the size of this, Mandy. This is a lot bigger than an iceberg,” she replied.

“Expands on the meaning of game changer as well,” Major Caldwell intoned.

“Hang in there, friends,” the ranking colonel told them. “It's going to get a lot... weirder, but... it... all makes sense once you know the whole story. Just... withhold judgment for now. Go into intel mode.”

Natalie nodded, as did the major. Amanda smiled at her. Natalie conceded she needed to trust the smile. Thus, she returned the smile. Amanda nodded and let her go.


	3. Chapter 3

Natalie ate in her room while immersed in the briefing materials. Few answers emerged, and she managed to fill three pages of a legal pad with questions. The clock on the wall told her thirty minutes existed before she could begin to ask. For the fifth time, Natalie turned back to page one and began to read the material again. Once again the words captured her.

Forty minutes later she resumed her seat and settled down in the training room. This time Padma Bray and Dean Thomas sat waiting with Colonel Lange. The trio chatted so quietly Natalie could not pick out specific words. Once the four other doctors situated themselves, Amanda ended her talk and stood. She glanced at each of her subordinates. Her iron gray hair looked at odds with the twinkle of curiosity in her eyes.

“I know: engrossing, informative, but not entirely... illuminating,” the colonel said to start the meeting and indicated the briefing packet each brought along. “I'm sure each of you can spout example after example of historical events that now appear completely magical on the surface, and you might be right.”

The grin on the colonel's face became infectious. Natalie smiled in spite of herself and the questions burning in her mind. However, she found herself in the minority. Only Arliss Caldwell seemed to find any humor in her statements.

“People we once thought fictional... are not so fictional anymore. So, I'd say, yes, Virginia, there really was a Merlin.”

Natalie chuckled as much in nervousness as in humor.

“But that probably doesn't answer any pertinent questions,” the commanding officer said, and every military hand shot into the air. “First you need to hear from our gues... no, our colleagues. Mrs. Bray and Mr. Thomas are going to be essential parts of this unit. We need to recognize that right from the start. As such, I've arranged something for them.”

Colonel Lange turned to face them and said: “Please, stand. This is official, and normies stand for official functions.”

“So do... magi,” Padma Bray replied while she stood. “You do know...”

“I know you're probably not Zoroastrian, but the title does work,” Amanda countered.

Padma nodded and Dean Thomas huffed a bit.

“By order of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Prime Minster of Great Britain, and... and the Minister of Magic for the United Kingdom,” said Colonel Amanda Lange in her most officious voice. “Padma Bray and Dean Thomas are hereby awarded the rank of major in the United Nations Defense and Expeditionary Forces, British Command. This rank is duly recorded as commensurate with the rank of major in British Army, carrying all duties and privileges. These field commissions are given in recognition for your respective roles in Cardiff and London, and your willingness to engage with this new unit.”

Natalie thought of one word as she studied the reactions of Bray and Thomas: gobsmacked. They each looked stunned. Amanda then reached onto her briefcase and withdrew two small boxes covered in black velvet. She opened one, and Natalie saw light glint off an object.

“You will wearing a stylized major insignia from the British Army. Behind the crown you will a roaring lion... and I thought that was a royal insignia...”

“Stolen by Richard the First from Godric Gryffindor after Gryffindor gave him a bit of help over in the Middle East somewhere,” Dean Thomas stated in an angry voice. “I heard say it was supposed to be an honor for Gryffindor, but did you even notice how he never gets mentions in any of your – what'd you call yourselves: normies? – normie history books?”

“Dean, give it a miss, will you?” Padma droned at him.

“Well, then, Mr. Thomas, wear it with extra pride and be certain you represent all of your people in England,” Colonel Lange said and handed him the box.

Thomas took it and scowled at the insignia.

“Major Bray?” Colonel Lange said and handed her a box.

The newly minted major opened it, smiled at the contents, and airily said: “Thank you!”

“Atten-tion!” Colonel Lange barked. “It is my honor and privilege to welcome Major Bray and Major Thomas into the British Army and to announce they've been detailed to our division... small as it is. Sa-lute!”

Everyone in the room jumped to their feet, faced the two magic users, and gave them a crisp salute. Padma Bray did her best to imitate the gesture, and Dean Thomas lazily flopped his hand up next to his head in a vague approximation of a British salute.

“When you return to your quarters, you'll find the official paperwork, a few forms you need to complete, and a stack of uniforms for you to wear. It'll... give you greater freedom if the other military personnel know you're actually part of the British Army. One of our officers here will help you sort out the clothing and how to wear it.”

“You're joking?” Dean Thomas grunted.

“Dean, I swear I'll hex you into bugbear if you don't start to behave and cooperate!” Major Bray yelled at her friend. “They're trying, see? We need their help as much as they need ours!”

Major Thomas looked abashed and stared at the ground.

“I'll get him cooperate,” Bray said to the colonel.

“Mr. Thomas, you don't have to accept this commission, and you can leave whenever you like,” Colonel Lange said in a manner Natalie recognized, and she gave thanks the colonel did not direct it at her. “I can arrange to have you sent wherever you think you can survive.”

From the corner of her eye, Natalie saw her fellow officers react in constrained surprise. Dean Thomas, however, openly goggled a the colonel. An icy draft seemed to roll across the floor toward the stubborn, magical man. He appeared to feel it as well, although Natalie knew it to be imaginary. Dean Thomas slumped and nodded his head.

“Very well. I fully expect you to appropriately conduct yourself as an officer in her majesty's army.”

Thomas opened his mouth, but not fast enough as Bray said: “One wrong word from you and you'll be rooting 'round for toadstools in Lake District for the rest of your life!”

Dean Thomas sank a little further into himself. At the same moment, Colonel Lange angled herself toward the Hindi-descended woman.

“Major Bray, while I truly appreciate your intent, we generally don't threaten our fellow officers,” the senior officer said, but note a hint of reproof colored her tone. 

 

“Is that so?” Dean grumbled.

“I said generally, and, as I said a moment ago, you don't have accept the commission.”

Natalie could tell something else lay behind the exchange between the colonel and the magi man

“Fine. All right. I get it. Sure, I'll be one of your officers,” Dean Thomas said and waggled the commission pins in the air. “Major Thomas at your service, headmistress!”

“It's colonel, you dolt, and just be glad McGonagall isn't here or she transfigure you into a rat,” Padma hissed at the man.

Thomas grunted and fell silent.

“At ease,” Colonel Lange said, but it sounded more like a question.

The standing officers sank back down into their respective chairs. Major Bray and Major Thomas did as well, but Colonel Lange remained standing. She looked first at the British contingent and then to their United States counterparts. She sighed once.

“Now that we've settled that, I want to skew the order of events,” the colonel told her troops. “Before we get to the AV part...”

“The what?” Dean Thomas burbled.

“AV, and it stands for audio-visual.”

“Oh, yeah, right. The Weasley...”

 

“Yes, Major Thomas, that,” Amanda Lange cut off the man. “Since the events in Cardiff happened before the burning of London, I'd like Major Bray to recount for us what she witnessed and experienced.”

“Begging your pardon, Colonel Lange, but I've read just about every report generated from...” Commander Ramirez intruded.

“Oh? So you know why why the zee horde swarmed Cardiff in the first place?” Colonel Lange interjected.

Commander Ramirez's mouth hung open and silent.

“You wouldn't know this, miss…. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name and can't read your breast tag,” Major Bray filled the silence.

“Ramirez. Commander Anita Ramirez, US Navy BUMED, NATO battalion…”

“Nina,” Colonel Lange said.

“Yes, ma'am?” Commander Ramirez snapped to attention.

“No, no, Nina. What I meant was you go by the name Nina,” Colonel Lange hastily corrected herself. “Since I plan on us working closely together, I don't want rank or protocol to interfere too much. I think you should address one another on a more informal basis while we're behind closed doors.”

A smirk tugged at the edges of Natalie's face. She could sense Colonel Lange getting ready to unleash a bit of her own magic. Time and again Amanda proved very capable at forging cohesion among her subordinates.

“Okay, maybe introductions are in order after all,” Amanda Lange said as much to herself as to everyone one else. “In order of rank, Lieutenant Colonel Natalie Jenkins, United States Army Medical Corps, is one of the best virology and pathology researchers I know, and I get to call her Nat. The rest of you better go by Natalie until she gets comfortable with you.”

In short order Natalie and the two new officers got fully introduced to the rest of the unit. Lieutenant Colonel Randall Miller, henceforth Randy, served with the US Air Force Medical Services and specialized in bacteriological and viral medicine. Colonel Lange repeated what she said earlier about Major Louis Savini, or Lou, but detailed some of his impressive work in nuclear biology and nuclear medicine. Major Arliss Caldwell, and Arliss remained Arliss, proved to unique in that he acted as a forensic pathologist and worked extensively in immunology prior to the zee incursion. Commander Ramirez arrived from the Navy as one of their top neurological surgeons and an expert in neuro-chemical science. Colonel Lange, who did not give anyone permission to use her familiar name, lastly recited her long list of achievements in internal medicine and genetics. 

Padma Bray and Dean Thomas each appeared to shrink a little as the members of the team got introduced.

“Please, don't be put off by this rather select group of people,” Colonel Lange implored the two magic user. She faced Padma more squarely.

“Right,” Padma drolly commented.

“Finally, Major Garner, base sub-commander and one hell of viral pathologist in his own right, will be joining us after the debriefing sessions.”

The news came as a pleasant surprise, but she noticed the roster appeared top-heavy in regard virologists and pathologists. Knowing her friend, Natalie did believe for one moment it happened by accident. The overt make-up of the unit indicated the expectation they would dig deep into the cause of the zee plague. Despite what she figured out some time before, it still came as a shock to think all previous efforts probably produced nothing of real value. Privately Natalie remained angry her work never saw the light of day. As such, the questions stacked in her mind.

“With introductions out of the way, Major Bray, could you give us a little background on yourself and your involvement in the Cardiff incident?” Colonel Lange returned to the British magic user. “And feel free to sit.”

Padma Bray sat and did not move for several moments. The range of emotions that rippled across her face Natalie named one after the other. She and likely every other living person on the planet felt the same at one time or another. Major Bray gazed at the floor.

“I, um... well, like Dean I graduated from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with some decent NEWTs and OWLs,” Padma began.

“Wait, excuse me, Pad... Major Bray...” Arliss Caldwell began.

“Padma is fine. I'm not really a soldier and not used to all this... jargon,” the woman stated.

“Thank you, and please call me Arliss,” the other US Army major said in a friendly voice. “But did you say there's a school for witchcraft and wizardry?”

Padman nodded, and the first of surreal conversations began. The standard military personnel learned schools of magic could be found in most countries, and some tended to be more prestigious than others. Europe, it seemed, possessed several elite schools. The United States, they learned, contained a number of magical schools, but only one sounded to be on the same level as the European counterparts. The non-magical officers sat in rapt attention as Padma, with the help of Major Thomas who seemed very knowledgeable about the schools worldwide, laid out the basic function of the schools. The two also gave a concise and quick history lesson regarding some of the geopolitical aspects.

“And all of this happened because the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?” Lou Savini grumbled.

“Listen, mate, we couldn't live with you, so we decided to hide in plain sight to keep from being roasted alive,” Major Thomas grumbled in return. “The Statute made sure every witch and wizard around the world followed one important law: Don't let muggles get a whiff of magic.”

“Since you couldn't really see us anymore, people started to think witches and wizards were... make believe... pretend. It allowed us to live our lives in peace... more or less,” Padma said as if concluding that part of the story. “But the schools of magic existed long before that. Hogwarts got founded before the Norman conquest of England, and that really was a magic war 'cept nobody really knows much about it.”

“A thousand years?” Natalie heard herself say.

“Most of the muggle universities started in competition with the wizarding ones,” Dean Thomas added.

“What is a muggle again?” Commander Ramirez queried.

“What you blokes call a normie we call a muggle: non-magical folk. Sorry, just too used to the word to switch just like that,” Major Thomas said and snapped his fingers, causing a few sparks to emerge and hover in the air for a few moments.

“While the history lesson is fascinating, it doesn't really factor into what we are facing,” Colonel Lange jumped into the conversation. “Major Bray, please, continue with the more recent turn of events.”

“Right, sorry,” the woman said and her cheeks glowed a little. “We had a big magic war when Dean and I were in school. Lost a number of good friends in that, but... Voldemort…”

Dean Thomas visibly shuddered.

“Oh, grow up, Dean. He's been dead for – what? – over fifteen years now?”

“Tell me you still don't have nightmares?” Thomas rejoined in a low voice.

Padma stared off in the distance for a few seconds, and then she, too, shook a little.

“After the battle with... with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named…” and she paused again before rousing herself. “I went to work for the Ministry of Magic in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. I got pretty good a sussing out what someone managed to do, so they sent me to Senghennydd to deal with the goings-on there.”

“Bunch of bloody Welsh nutters,” Dean mumbled.

“Senghennydd is a bit northwest of Cardiff,” Padma said while she tactfully ignored her friend. “We knew about that lab you mug... normies have outside of Cardiff: the one no one is supposed to know or talk about.”

The woman held the group with a baleful stare. Natalie heard about the lab, but she never visited even after getting an invitation. Following the Cardiff disaster, no one mentioned it with any sense of pride. Despite her rank and clearances, she did not discover the events that took place. Thus, Natalie paid extra close attention.

Padma watched their reactions and then continued: “Foreign affairs kept a good eye on that place. We had a few epidemics what came out of your laboratory, but you'd never admit to it.”

“We were unaware of the effects it had on your community, Major Bray,” Colonel Lange coolly remarked.

“Victims of our own making, eh?” Dean Thomas shot at her.

Colonel Lange shrugged as if to say the debate would be moot in the long run.

“Anyway, I got an owl asking me…

“An owl?” Nina questioned.

“We use owls like you used to use carrier pigeons. Can't send letter through your post, especially a howler, and this Internet thing acts funny every time we try to send an 'lectronic mail, so we use use owls. Bloody right useful birds and nobody is the wiser,” Major Thomas answered and sounded a tad smug.

“I got a message 'bout some queer goings-on that way: not at the lab, but at the village normies think are a patch of woods just under Radyr. Ever wonder why they built the lab south of Llantrisant Road?”

“Um, Major Bray, I don't think any of us are conversant about the topography of England,” Amanda said with a touch of embarrassment.

“Dean, you've got a decent hand with maps, don't you?” Padma inquired of her friend. “Think you can show 'em?”

Dean Thomas stood up and faced the blank screen behind Colonel Lange. He reached into his jacket, retrieved his wand, and began to wave it around while mumbling before the guards could react. Second later an intricate map of England appeared. As though he dealt with a large touch screen, the wizard maneuvered his hands until a section of British Isles came into sharper clarity. The name Cardiff bobbed in the lower right corner. Above it other names appeared denoting the various towns and villages. He pointed out Radyr, and below that a spot labeled Caerraddyyrn.

“Caerraddyyrn is a lot older than even Cardiff. Some of the stones used in the high wall go back thousands of years, and few even have old, powerful glyphs on them,” the British woman continued.

“No fooling? That why floo network is so spotty over there?” Dean asked with keen interest.

Padma nodded.

“What happened in that town, Padma?” Randy Miller, the Air Force lieutenant colonel, inquired.

“Strange dreams. Feelings of dread. Some of the older folk had visions. Night walking. Their kin would find 'em in the middle of the night standing by the wall trying to lay fortification spells on it... and always facing south. When we'd wake the poor codgers, they'd start crying and carrying on like the Grindelwald or Voldemort battles were still going on.”

“Did they say it?” Dean pressed.

Padma nodded and suddenly looked ashen.

“Say what?” The ranking colonel prodded.

“Inferi.”

Only Dean Thomas reacted to the word. Everyone else simply stared at the two. Amanda politely cleared her throat.

“Right, right,” Padma said and came out of whatever disturbing reverie held her. “Inferi are corpses reanimated by dark wizards to do their bidding, but... they're mindless.”

“Like zombies... our zee,” Lou interpreted.

“No, not like your zombies, and you don't even know what your real zombies are,” Major Bray coldly rebuked him. “The American zombies got wiped out fast by these new... things, what you call zee.”

“Our American zombies. Is there some sort of difference?” Natalie asked while she wrestled with the notion zombies might come in different varieties. Her left hand fiddled with a loose string on her right cuff. Her right hand held a pen ready to take notes.

“American zombies were created by the Haitian witches and wizards who ended up in the lower Mississippi area... Louisiana, I think. They came to it from their African ancestors, and they used their zombies to fight against the American slavers. Most stopped making 'em by the turn of the last century, but the ones they did make continued to live... well, un-live... undead life. Exist!”

“And these zombies are different because…?” Arliss requested clarification.

“Because they can think and reason for the most part, 'bout equal to a ten-year old, and they don't want to eat the living,” Major Thomas responded.

The group of doctors, included Colonel Lange, gaped at one another.

“Ever wonder how they came up with the idea for Solomon Grundy?” Dean asked in the quiet and seemed pleased with himself.

The reference took them aside for a short while, and Randall Miller took several minutes to explain Solomon Grundy, the feared undead supervillian in the DC comic universe. Half way into his explanation, he and Dean began to debate the amount of memories the creature retained. Colonel Lange derailed their conversation.

“Well, then, that begs the question of whether the current zee are a mutated form of the... old world zombies,” the colonel posited to bring the group back to attention.

“No, no relation. The inferius spell of today didn't exist when the American zombies got made, or at least the voodoo priests and priestesses didn't know the one they had. Their process takes a lot longer,” Dean related.

Padma tossed a look at him.

“The Auror office had to deal with a few people trying to resurrect that practice,” the man answered.

Padma snorted as she tried to hold off a laugh, but Randy and Arliss burst out laughing. Dean smirked at them, but added: “We had to do research to figure out what we were up against. I went to New Orleans for a few days to talk to some of the priestesses who are still alive. Totally mental.”

“So the zee are not related?” Amanda asked in a flinty voice.

“No, they're not,” Padma returned to the topic. “While I tried to deduce what was happening in Caerraddyyrn, you could sort of feel that something wasn't quite right nearby. It prickled at the back of my mind the whole time I did the investigation. I made a note of it. Your zee were already on the loose in India and China... in most parts of the world, but... I never thought they were connected.”

“What did you do when the attack started in Cardiff?” Lou Savini questioned in his blunt Marine voice.

“Didn't start there,” Padma grumbled at him. “They had some of these zee things in that lab, and they got out. The... zee ran straight for Caerraddyyrn. Killed everyone before they could mount a defense... before they even knew what was happening, and then they went after Cardiff.”

“Official reports say the zee came out of the bay!” Natalie challenged. She read the accounts so many times looking for clues she memorized several of them.

“They're wrong, or they lied,” Dean offered.

“The zee got into the River Taff somehow, and that's the main route they used to get to Cardiff. The current carried 'em down to the bay,” Padma iterated while shaking her head. “They got into Llandaff, Blackweir, and Canton along the way. Turned whole neighborhoods overnight. The real attacked started in the upper part of the city. At the same time a whole group headed north toward where I was working... lived, really.”

The military personnel cast wary looks at one another after watching location names flare on the map Dean created. None liked the fact the original and official reports cited incorrect information. It helped explain why Cardiff fell so rapidly, including the outlying areas. The wild spread of zee in and around Cardiff always defied reason. Now it made sense to everyone sitting in the room.

“They already got through Nantgarw and Upper Boat before we realized the problem we had on our hands. We didn't know what they wanted at the time, but any time zee come near any witch or wizard, we start having nightmares,” Padma told them.

“Did you have nightmares?” Amanda queried

The new Major Bray nodded and said: “All of us did, but we didn't know what it meant. We sent forces out to fight zee coming toward us, and they never returned. Caerphilly and Abertridwr got consumed before we realize how serious it was. They were coming for us, and we just sat there thinking we could hold them back or get away if too many showed up.”

The magical woman stopped and gazed at the floor. Tears welled in her eyes and fell silently to the ground. After a few seconds while she sank into misery, Dean finally stood and went to her side. He hugged her with one arm. She collapsed into him and began to sob.

“We'll take a break for a few minutes,” Colonel Lange gently and wisely ordered. She then went over to join Majors Bray and Thomas, and offered the woman comforting words.

“What do you make of this?” Major Caldwell inquired after sliding closer to Commander Ramirez and leaning around behind her back to talk to his service branch compatriot.

Natalie stared at the short man for a quarter of a minute trying to collect her thoughts and stop her imagination from creating pictures of what possibly occurred. It became clear Nina listened to the question as her hear rocked from side to side as if considering the question. Natalie shifted her eyes to the map on the wall. The route of the zee lay in red lines, connecting the cities in the county of Wales.

“It explains a lot about Cardiff,” she said in half-whisper.

“I mean about this whole magic business,” the man clarified.

“Reserving judgment, I guess,” Natalie confessed to him. “We're people of science. We don't allow hocus-pocus as part of the method we follow, but you've got to admit what happened with the chair...”

“Mass hallucination?”

Natalie slowly shook her head, and Nina mirrored the gesture. In the background Padma Bray's sobbing grew worse. Arliss' deep set dark eyes bore into hers as though he could extract her opinion. The rest of the contingent listened as the colonel ordered the guards to help the woman to her quarters. They carefully assisted Padma to a standing position and then guided her out of the room. Dean Thomas watched with what Natalie assessed to be deep pity and visceral anger. His dark face grew a shade darker.

“Major Bray will be retiring for a short while,” Colonel Lange said in a clearly emotional voice. “Major Thomas, do you think you can finish her story.”

Dean Thomas whipped around and glared at the assembled. His visage appeared accusatory and almost hateful. Those sitting behind tables began to shift uncomfortably in their seats. After a few moments Dean's face relaxed a bit.

“Right,” he said in a thick voice, coughed twice, and inhaled through his nose. “By the time Senghenydd thought about mounting a proper defense, it was too late. The inf, I mean zee, surrounded them. Most couldn't get out without running into a murderous group of those... things. Some thought they could hold their houses with protection spells. They tried. They died.”

“Why?” Lou asked in a flat but less brutal tone.

“The magic attracted the blighters. We didn't know it at the time, we thought we could fight them off... but they just kept coming... more and more of them.”

“Senghenydd?” Amanda Lange reminded him.

“Yeah, Senghenydd. Totally surrounded. Zee pouring in from everywhere. Padma and her family tried to get out, but they got trapped at the Cwm Pore channel. With two small children and the zee coming down on them, swimming the channel wasn't the best option.”

“Why didn't they do that disappearing thing?” Nina inquired.

“Strange thing that, but makes sense when you know. Seems like when too many zee are in one area, magic doesn't work too well... sometimes not at all. You don't have time to figure out why your wand suddenly turns into nothing but a stick when them things are bearing down on you with their teeth and hands and trying to get a hold of you. See?” Major Thomas stated in a constrained tone.

Natalie wished she could make herself temporarily deaf. The story she felt certain taking shape played out too frequently in too many places. She braced herself.

“They tried fighting, they did, but the more magic they tried to use, the worse it got for them. When we use magic around zee, it agitates the rotters. It's like they get angry about us using it. If we knew then... but we didn't. Padma didn't. Neither did Emerson.”

“Emerson Bray,” Colonel Lange said, but not as a question.

Dean nodded and said: “He was carrying the twins and trying everything he could to push the zee back, but nothing seemed to work well... if it even worked at all. They kept pressing Padma and her family back to river. One broke through and bit Emerson on the arm he was using to hold them babies,” and Major Thomas' voice grew distant as he spoke. “Padma tried using healing spells on him, not knowing what she was up against. It caused him to change fast. Half a minute, maybe a minute, and suddenly she looking at a zee hanging onto her children.”

The story took on a far uglier aspect than for which Natalie prepared. Her gut twisted and threatened to heave as her mind created images. She forced herself to look at Dean Thomas. The man stood like a statue staring down the path of memories he clearly did not want to remember. His lips trembled. Tears edged out of his eyes.

“She watched her husband kill and eat her children,” he croaked out the words. “She fell into the river channel. It carried her out of the mass of zee while those in the channel just sank. They don't do well in water what with their bad balance and all... and they just sink. The water saved her 'cause she could swim, but... I'm not sure Padma wanted saving right then.”

Natalie's body started to shake as she absorbed the story. Although she never admitted it, she never fought to maintain the integrity of her wedding date whenever some issue presented itself. Natalie completely loved Dillon, but the idea of getting married and starting a family in the horrible state of the world stymied her wants. Moreover, Dillon expressed a desire for children. After hearing Dean Thomas relate what befell Padma Bray and her family, the thought of having children almost made her vomit. She dearly wanted children. However, she did not want to bring food for the zee into the world. Padma's personal tragedy reverberated between her ears.

“She... nothing she could do 'bout. Magic didn't work, and Emerson... not her husband anymore. I knew him, he wouldn't…,” Dean stumbled through a bit more of the story before pausing for a moment when he said: “I don't think she'd've made it if we hadn't been in Dumbledore's Army...”

“I was unaware any magical army existed,” the Marine major curtly said.

“Did you even know we witches and wizards fought a war almost two decades ago?” Major Thomas responded with a question using the same tone.

Lou Savini shook his head.

“I was teenager, still in school, and we spent nearly two, really three years fighting one of the worst dark wizards ever to show up. He had an army, too, and Padma and her sister fought him every step of the way,” the dark-skinned man at the front of the room told him. “And before you go on thinking this was some sort of finger wiggling light show, a lot of people died... including muggles. You'll never know or understand how lucky you are we stopped... him... Voldemort.”

Natalie felt as if she better understood the man. Fighting battles at young age changed a person, and Dean Thomas showed some of the classic after-effects of being a child soldier. The fact he always seemed ready to pull his wand served as a good example. Walking away from London while it burned also showed him to be a survivor. It would take a tested and trained mind to escape the ravages of the London battles.

“Cardiff happened because you lot lost control of the situation in that lab...”

Half the staff began to protest.

“Oh, shut it!” Dean Thomas yelled. “Deny it all you want, but somebody brought the zee to that lab, and it sure as bloody hell wasn't us! Someone didn't do their job, and those things got out. You might not've known they'd hunt my kind down like they did, but... well, there it is.”

An angry silence settled over the group.

“I'm not saying the zee wouldn't have come, and I'm pretty bloody sure they'd make their way there sooner or later, but... Merlin's Beard! You brought those rotters right into our backyard... and not just the magic folk. How many of your own people got killed and became part of them? Didn't anybody think?”

“Major Thomas,” Colonel Lange calmly said as she shifted in her chair to face him. “I understand your anger. My hometown got overrun as well, but you need to address this to the British military. No one in this room was part of that... and I don't think any of them would be part of it.”

Dean snorted in disgust.

“Major Thomas,” Natalie said. “I'm a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army in the Medical Corp. I've examined at least two dozen zee trying to figure this out, and half of them still had an intact brain...”

She heard a gasp on her left. Dean Thomas narrowed his eyes and scrutinized her. It felt almost physical. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets as if he did not trust them.

“Every exam I conducted on an ambulatory zee took place at least twenty miles out at sea. It's standard protocol, major, in the US Army... in every branch of the military, except in secure facilities that can be locked down and blown up from remote locations,” she told the standing man in her most military manner. “And just so you know: that protocol went into full effect three and half months before Cardiff, so I feel pretty confident saying you're eyeballing the wrong fucking group of people.”

Natalie saw Amanda's eyebrows rise, but her mouth remained closed. She then locked gazes with Thomas, held it, and vowed to do so until her eyes dried out. Fortunately, the wizard blinked and looked away long before half a minute expired.

“Got it,” he said fifteen seconds later when Natalie refused to look away.

In an odd way, it pleased Natalie that Major Thomas did not offer an apology. She took it as a sing the man still wanted answers and felt free to be wrong in his search. Hope could only be found in tenacity, she learned over the years, and Dean Thomas appeared tenacious as hell.

“I think we need to take a longer break for a while. We'll meet again after mess. Report back here at eighteen hundred hours,” Colonel Lange told the group when it seemed as though the stand off would continue.

“Yes, Colonel,” Natalie said and the other officers sounded off as well.

“Dismissed.”

Chairs scraped against the floor as the small medical unit stood and saluted their superior officer when Lange rose and headed toward the door. In a fluid gesture the colonel snagged the edge of Dean Thomas' shirt and yanked him toward her. The none-too-subtle tactic threw him off balance and forced him to follow. Everyone in the room began to hear her whisper furiously at the man as they exited.

“What an asshole,” Lou Savini harrumphed to the others remaining in the room.

“He probably has a good reason,” Randy Miller countered.

“I'm not forming an opinion 'til I hear his story,” Nina Ramirez commented.

“Why?” Natalie asked her while collecting her materials.

“Well, if he went through one war and survived and then lived through the razing of London, he's been through some pretty tough shit. If this guy really can do magic like... like it appears he can and he's frightened by all this, that's got to tell you something.”

Four people listened to her. Only Savini appeared unaffected by her statements. He squinted his eyes.

“So does that mean I can act like asshole 'cause I served on the front at both Louisville and Chicago?” Lou toss out the questioned.

“Which Chicago?” Arliss asked.

“First and second, and the firefight in Louisville.”

Natalie froze. She served on the back medical lines at the second effort to neutralize Chicago, and sometimes the nightmares of the events woke her even after three years. Savini's record impressed her, but she did not think it gave him a license to be a terrible person.

“Do you want our respect or do you want to be an asshole?” She asked the man.

He regarded her for a few moments and said nothing.

“Can't have both, Lou.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he grunted and finished stuffing his briefcase. “So what about the guy with the magic stick?”

“I'm taking Nina's advice and waiting to hear his story. In the meantime, I got to think over what I heard and then hitting the mess hall at seventeen hundred if anyone wants to join me.”

“Ooh, a date!” Randy rejoined and grinned.

“You flyboys are all alike,” Natalie returned and then headed for the door.

“How did you know I fly?”


	4. Chapter 4

It did not come as a surprise to Natalie when the evening meeting got canceled. Amanda send a junior lieutenant around notifying the officers. They also received a blue envelope inside a red envelope. It contained a highly classified notification stating they received clearance to read any report regarding any zee attack. Natalie knew many reports existed of such extreme restricted release as to be thought of a ghost papers. Once she finished with her evening meal, she connected her computer to the secured local area network and began to peruse some of the most secure documents she ever saw.

The knock at the door shortly before eight o’clock in the evening also did not surprise her. What finally did catch her off-guard came in the form of Majors Caldwell and Garner standing on the other side. She blinked at them, momentarily at a loss. Major Garner smirked.

“She was expecting Colonel Lange,” Garner told Caldwell.

“How do you know?” Caldwell rejoined.

“They’re old friend and she’s looking at us like she doesn’t recognize our faces.”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, Majar Garner,” Natalie said with mock exasperation. “Get in here... both of you.”

“Natalie,” Arliss Caldwell said without laughing as he entered, although his eyes displayed his humor.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” Major Garner remarked with a nod of his head.

“It’s just Natalie, Major, and I know you’re eyeballs deep in this,” she told the man as he strolled in.

Both men wore the same digital pattern camouflage duty uniform they wore earlier. Natalie did not change either. The third button hole gleamed with bronze oak leaf in contrast to her silver oak leaf. All three brandished the US Army MEDCOM insignia on the shoulder sleeves. The modified caduceus mixed both snake and sword. While Natalie padded around shod in slippers, the two majors donned the tan army boots. Natalie closed the door when they fully entered.

“Nice digs,” Major Caldwell commented.

“You have the exact same quarters,” Major Garner drolly remarked.

“Take a seat in the living room,” Natalie requested and then offered: “Care for anything to drink?”

“I’m good,” Major Garner said while Major Caldwell replied: “Same here.”

Natalie resumed her seat and studied the two men. Major Garner looked all mature muscles with a square jaw, dark eyes, and closely cropped brown hair streaked with gray. Major Caldwell with his thinning hair, short stature, and wiry frame seemed oddly composed. Garner looked anxious.

“So, ah Natalie... um, how fast did you go digging into the records?” Garner inquired without any preamble, and he sounded somewhat excited.

“Still digging, but... did you take a look at the LA report?”

Garner shook his head from side to side.

“Did you read the London assessment?” Caldwell countered.

“Downloaded it, but... I heard people compare it to Los Angeles, and I wanted a refresher on that first. They declared it too hot to let research teams go in, and I only ever saw the redacted versions,” Natalie told them.

“Learn anything new?” Garner asked.

“Lots, Major...”

“Just Gerry.”

“Thanks,” she said with appreciation. Sometimes formality got in the way to which her new commanding officer alluded during the morning meeting. “Zee didn’t spread from LAX, like everyone claimed. It was an infected ship in Marina del Rey...”

“I always thought the airport story sounded suspicious,” Caldwell chirped.

“Real fishy, and I don’t mean that as a pun,” Garner quipped.

Natalie rolled her eye and said: “But I have a question for you, Gerry: when did you find out about the wizards?”

“Same time as Amanda: seven weeks ago. They flew us to Zurich right after the brought Bray in, and they wanted us to assess her physical and mental condition. They thought she was nuts.”

“Army psyche eval?”

Major Caldwell watched the two converse and focused exclusively on Gerry when Natalie spoke.

“No. They wanted a med eval first to see if she sustained any physical damage that might explain her claims. It seemed similar to the Auray case, so they called Amanda... and you know she worked some really strange cases coming out of Korea, so...”

Garner trailed off and no one needed to ask why. Of all the zee engagements, the events in Korea never got covered up or redacted from the public record. However, Caldwell looked momentarily confused.

“Auray, France, where we learned if someone ingested liquefied zee, they would turn. The whole public water system got converted into infection delivery mechanism when the zee got trapped in the intake ducts and began to disintegrate,” Natalie laid out the barest of details.

Caldwell shudder. Natalie studied him for a few seconds. She wondered about the man.

“Forensic pathologist, huh, Arliss? This has got to be interesting for you,” she led her non-question question with an oblique compliment.

“Darlington, Canada, two years ago, during the deep freeze after the plant got locked up. I got to investigate the effects of both radiation poisoning and extreme hypothermia on the zee,” he answered while staring into the distance. “More controlled than Mumbai.”

“And the results?” Garner inquired.

“Like the tardigrade, nothing kills them. Unless the brains got fully cooked, they didn’t stop. We all know freezing only halts them until they thaw. You know, I found something... odd... when I did the autopsies. Since you worked on ambulatory zee, I wanted to ask you what you discovered.”

Natalie looked at Arliss for a few seconds to assess his request, and she saw an interesting glint in his eyes before saying: “You mean the strange crystal formations along the neural ducts.”

Arliss nodded his head. Garner did not appear surprised.

“You saw them, too?” She questioned the colonel's apparent right-hand man.

The base sub-commander nodded and asked: “Any guesses?”

“Somehow the virus must lay…”

A heavy knock at the door interrupted her comment. She glanced apologetically at her new colleagues and got up. Someone thudded on the door again. Natalie picked up her pace. When she opened the door, Amanda Lange stood on the other side with Lou Savini in tow. Savini did not look pleased.

“Please tell me you haven't gotten to the good stuff yet?” Amanda begged the question.

“Actually, we really just started talking.”

The colonel walked in when Natalie stepped to one side. Savini followed. He bobbed his head once at her in greeting. She returned the gesture. Her commanding officer made a beeline to the living room. Natalie heard the other two guest stand to attention.

“At ease, boys,” Amanda said with a touch of humor. “Oh, and white if you've got it, Nat, and red if you don't. I know you have white because I know what gets stocked in these suites.”

“Anyone else care for some wine?” Natalie called out almost after the fact.

She busied herself in the small galley while Garner and Caldwell brought the two new arrivals up to speed on what they discussed beforehand. Two minutes later Natalie distributed two glasses of wine, two bottles of beer, and sat down with a glass of red in a new spot on the sofa since Amanda commandeered her chair. She listened to the final re-briefing.

“So you've got a hypothesis concerning the crystal deposits,” Savini remarked.

“Possibly a means to instigate neural transmission to keep the brain running,” she posited her guess.

“The virus is leaving behind deposits?” Garner said quietly, but the question did not sound aimed at the group.

“Maybe,” Natalie responded.

“You don't sound too certain,” Caldwell murmured.

Natalie glanced at her commanding officer and queried: “How much are we allowed to tell, Mandy?”

“Everything, Nat. Keep nothing hidden. We all share the same clearance, so...” Amanda said and trailed off. The colonel's eyes glittered with keen intent.

“Are Nina and Randy joining us?” She inquired before going forward.

“Miller took a call from the States, and Ramirez was so deep into her reading I couldn't get a sensible word out of her. We'll play catch-up first thing tomorrow. Just tell these good gentlemen what you discovered.”

Three sets of male eyes focused exclusively on her. Natalie arranged her thoughts while she met the stares. As far as she knew, only the top of the medical command knew what she prepared to say.

“Let me ask you guys this: run any protein scans on zee blood to find the virus markers so you could figure out which cell receptors were begin affected?”

“Zee blood is coagulated and the cells are mostly broken down by the time we get to them, so there's not much to find except a mess of proteins... even the antigens would be hard to discriminate,” Caldwell said and spoke like a virologist.

“But did any of you test?” Natalie repeated her question.

Heads barely shook back and forth. She found the negative responses only slightly surprising. While everyone said understanding the solanum virus formed a top priority, actual research often fell to the wayside since equipment, money, and personnel often needed to be applied elsewhere. Natalie noticed a veritable dearth of real analysis and investigation. She found a lot of topical research that made generalizations, but in-depth study went lacking. Moreover, past data regarding the virus proved anecdotal whenever she tried to trace the original source of the so-called discovery. Thus, she felt driven to reveal something about their worst common enemy. Her colleagues confirmed some of her most worrisome thoughts.

“I did, and I ran dozens of panels. I checked for both double and single-stranded RNA, reverse transcribing, fragments of cell receptors with any attached particles... over and over from both ambulatory and non-functioning zee,” she explained. “Know what I found?”

Caldwell opened his mouth a bit, but then closed it. Four people waited for her results. The air vent rattled slightly as ventilation system kicked into action. What emerged felt sterile and dried out her lips.

“Nothing,” Natalie said and stared off into the distance. “Not a single trace or marker of solanum... anywhere.”

“Bullshit,” Savini blurted, but then showed the decency to appeared surprised by his own outburst.

“No, not bullshit, Lou. I checked and checked and checked, rechecked results, looked for errors, invalidations, but... nothing.”

“Wait!” Garner burped the word. “If that's true, then solanum... No! It's all we've focused on for almost five years!”

“It doesn't exist, Jerry. Someone posited the theory early on, and it just seemed so damn logical at the time nobody really examined the idea until Natalie started scanning for it over two years ago. I argued with her for half a year until the number of reports she sent me broke a shelf,” Colonel Lange entered the discussion.

“But we've been using virus protocol all this time,” Savini charged in again. “It'd be a waste of time to...”

“Those protocols helped, Lou, and you know it,” Garner spit out the words before Lange could open her mouth. “Following them proved sound then, and it's still sound now.” Then he turned to a baleful eye to Natalie. “I don't mean to call your work into question, but you are absolutely certain about this.”

“Ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine,” Natalie rattled off the figure by which she stood.

“Based on what numbers?” Caldwell followed up with a logical question.

“She ran sixty-one separate tests, Arliss,” Lange added and rolled her eyes at Natalie. “I counted.”

“It's actually one hundred and four,” Natalie corrected her. “I held back the first forty because I didn't believe the results myself.”

Startled silence settled over the group. Each began to quietly nurse his or her drink while staring into the middle distance. Natalie understood their confusion and worry. Back when she first began, she almost panicked when test after test came up negative. Everything she thought she knew at the time regarding the zee got called into question. On top of the negative blood scan results, the crystals she found in the brains of the zee proved equally perplexing. Without the virus as an agent, she could not account for strange crystalline structures. General Weyland got to the point where the man would not even discuss her concerns regarding what she found because Natalie could not offer any answers or even a sound theory. As he looked at her new team, the same questions appeared to ripple across their faces.

“Can anyone else confirm your findings?” Caldwell asked after another healthy period of silence.

“Eleven other pathologies and virologists have also raised the flag,” Lange told him. “We are currently keeping a lid on this 'til we can formulate an explanation about the undead epidemic that sounds rational.”

“A cover-up? Army Med is involved in a cover-up?” Garner grumbled.

“Jesus, Jerry, all branches are in on it, and you've been involved in a few yourself, so stop acting so shocked.”

Major Garner shifted his eyes away from the colonel to the floor while his cheeks turned a little red.

“No one ever put much stock into finding a medical answer for this plague, and who knows how much funding we'd lose if this intel hit the front page of every newspaper and website in the world,” Natalie repeated what got told to her when she originally presented her findings.

“Some scientists we are if we're turning to magic for answers,” Caldwell sarcastically snorted the statement.

Savini sat up in his sat, eyes wide, and half-whispered: “It is those goddamn witches and wizards, isn't it?”

Natalie caught a flicker of a smirk on Amanda's face, yet it disappeared as quickly as it arrived. The assembled then turned their attention as one onto the only full-bird colonel in the room. Amanda Lange sat calmly and dispassionately in the seat.

“Jesus, Colonel, you have to tell us something!” Savini begged when the woman remained stock still.

“All I can say is you need to hear everything first before you jump to any conclusions.”

Despite twenty minutes of ceaseless prodding by her members of her squad, Colonel Lange never divulged any further information about what any of them would learn from the strange British duo. When Lange did not budge, the three men turned back to Natalie. Her new comrades pressed her with questions about every facet of the tests she performed during her hunt for the solanum virus. In the end, she opened her secure laptop and showed them numerous pages of results. The data spoke for her. By the end of the evening, Natalie felt both cantankerous and mentally exhausted from the grilling. However, she felt confident her fellow medical staff believed her as she shoved them out of her quarters. In the renewed quiet of her rooms, the thousands of questions she generated over the past day began to pester Natalie.

The next morning after mess, Natalie returned to the meeting room. Ten chairs circled two tables pushed together to form a large square. The group would sit together as equals, and Natalie used the same tactic herself in the past. Savini and Caldwell greeted her as she walked into the room. A few minutes later Garner, Miller, and Ramirez joined them. Without waiting for approval from Colonel Lange, although Natalie felt as though Garner worked under her orders, the unit spent half an hour reviewing what got discussed the previous evening. Miller and Ramirez both appeared shocked by the news regarding a complete lack of evidence for the solanum virus. However, three other officers confirmed what they saw on Natalie's computer, so disbelief grudgingly got dispelled.

“Atten-hut,” Major Garner barked when Colonel Lange entered the room, leading the two new British Majors.

Years of conditioning and training forced Natalie to her feet, along with the rest, as well as the salute.

“At ease,” Colonel Lange said in rolling New England accent. “Please be seated.”

Majors Bray and Thomas sat on Colonel Lange's left along one of the ends of the square. Everyone else sat more or less in their original seats. All remained silent, expectant. Colonel Lange let her eyes settled on each one of them. Natalie never quite mastered the art of extensively communicating with someone through a simple gaze, yet she and the others felt more at ease after the quiet exchange,

“I take it Nina and Randy were brought up to speed regarding last night's discussion?” Amanda Lange queried.

“Yes, ma'am, we were just finishing up the discussion,” Major Garner crisply replied.

“Take it down have a notch, Jerry, okay?”

Garner rolled his eyes and grinned.

“Colonel Lange, ma'am, not that I doubt Lieutenant Colonel Jenkins and the rest, but...” Randy Miller began while fiddling with a pen. His blue camouflage duty uniform stood out from the rest.

“Of course you doubt them, Randy, and I would expect that,” the colonel rejoined. “Took me weeks to come to grips with it myself. We predicated most of our thinking around the idea a heretofore unknown virus cause the zee plague. Solanum became our anchor in the medical and science communities. We needed it to be true despite the face we couldn't find any real evidence for such it.”

“Yes, ma'am, I get that, but what now? If solanum never existed, then what are we dealing with?” Nina Ramirez quickly asked.

“Nat?” Lange threw the question to the younger officer.

“To be honest: I have no idea. There's no precedent for this in the annals of medicine,” Natalie answered and stared at Ramirez while she spoke. “But I looked through literature. The idea of the dead coming back to life goes back a long, long way. It's part of almost every culture, so... this might've happened before.”

“Then why didn't the world get overrun with the undead long before this?” Savini chimed in with his gruff manner.

“I don't have an answer for that,” Natalie truthfully replied.

“Because this type of undead is brand new,” Major Bray said in a quiet voice.

“Oy, spot on there,” Dean Thomas concurred.

All eyes turned to them.

“Before we begin that particular discussion, I'd like Major Thomas to relate what he experienced in Bromley and as London burned,” Colonel Lange interrupted first.

“It's pretty common knowledge...” Thomas started.

“No, Major, your version is not common knowledge,” the colonel interjected. “Perhaps in your, ah, world it is, but what we know is only a sliver of the truth. Oh, and please describe your magi credentials so they get a better picture of who you are and what you do.”

Far above them the florescent lights blinked and hummed in a strange fashion. Major Thomas stared at Colonel Lange, his dark eyes seemed almost bottomless. Natalie also saw the familiar haunted expression of one who experienced far too many close encounters with the zee. Major Bray suffered a singular horror, but it appeared Dean Thomas witnessed it over and over.

“After the war, the Ministry of Magic relaxed a bunch of rules since He-Who... Voldemort purged most of the Ministry when he took over,” the man said and again anger bubbled just under his words. “I got into the Auror's office even though I didn't have the NEWTs...”

“Please stop for second,” Nina Ramirez request. “What Ministry? What's a NEWT, and I gather we're not talking about a salamander, and explain an Auror?”

“NEWTs are short for Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests. We take those in our final year of school to see what job we can land afterward. They're required tests for anyone who wants to work for the Ministry,” Padma Bray told the group after Dean frowned for five seconds. “The Ministry of Magic is the British arm... actually a major European arm of the Wizading Council. It's the magi version of Parliament.”

“And a Auror is a specialist in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Dean picked up the narrative as if on cue. “We hunt down the witches and wizards who've gone dark and are causing problems. After the Voldemort War, weren't too many Aurors left since he systematically targeted them, so they pretty much took on anyone who wanted to give it ago.”

“So you're like a police officer?” Randy Miller inquired in a hopeful manner of someone who desperately wanted to make sense of the surreal.

“It's a bit more than that, mate,” the British man testily stated as if the comparison did not suffice.

“More like SWAT,” Amanda Lange stepped into the conversation. “Major Thomas worked for a highly specialized branch of the British magi civil service. From what I've learned, the life of an Auror could come to short, violent end.”

“Not so much after Voldemort got defeated, but it's still a right tricky job,” Dean corrected and confirmed.

“And you think the Welsh are nutters,” Padma mumbled, but her comment elicited a smirk from Dean.

“Suffice it to say Major Thomas comes to us with a lot experience under his belt in dealing with serious magical threats, and this leads us to what happened in and around London. Please, continue Major,” Amanda said, using her colonel voice, and fixing Dean with a look.

“Yeah, right, so... ah, they – the zee – came through the Chunnel... and across from Gloucester and Bath,” Dean slowly began to speak. “Thousands of 'em, tens of thousands of the buggers just... well, it seemed like they just appeared, but I know what happened.”

His eyes unfocused as he gazed into the past.

“Cardiff?” Natalie heard herself asking aloud.

“No, before that,” Dean replied as if glad somebody handed him as starting point. His eyebrows pulled together. “We had the infer... these zee popping up in ports. Whole ships of – what'd you call 'em: the infected? – showed up. Containment became impossible because no one understood at first what we were fighting. Patterns showed up right quick.”

“For example?” Lou Savini dryly queried.

“They'd make a beeline right straight toward our – us magi that is – villages. It was kind of hard to determine what they were after at first since the zee would attack any living person on sight...” he began to explain.

“The zee do no have good visual acuity,” Arliss, the forensic pathologist, interjected. “Their olfactory senses are also mostly shut down, so they're not sniffing out the living. The zee appeared to be completely dependent on sound for locating their prey.”

“Oh, really?” Major Thomas half-snarled the response. “Ever see 'em attack one person in a group when they could've just as easily gone after a different victim. Ever see these things chase someone down?”

Natalie's head bobbed up and down along with almost everyone else. Arliss leaned forward a bit. A quick scan of Colonel Lange did not reveal what she thought. The colonel sat with her hands neatly folded in front of her while everyone else scribbled down notes in their portfolio books. It served to confirm the woman already knew all of this information.

“Why?” Dean concluded and sat back.

“Well, it's abundantly clear we have no real understanding with what we're dealing with, Mr. Thomas…

“Major, Commander,” Lange softly corrected her.

The overhead lighting buzzed a little louder. Ramirez nodded.

“Did you figure out... even ask what they were after?” Major Bray questioned in a tight voice.

“Let's let Dean finish first, and please stay on topic Major Thomas,” Amanda said and no one missed her words served as an order.

“I was in the field office in Bromley, south of London proper,” Major Thomas continued. He stared past everyone as the memories obviously began to take over. “We found out some witches and wizards were banding together to carry out some pretty dark experiments. The buggers wormed their way into the whole area and were causing more than spot of trouble.”

“Sol Coligo?” Padma questioned, but it sounded more like a statement.

“For Weiss' sake I can't stand them blokes,” Dean rumbled in a moody fashion. “They made the problem worse when the zee first showed up!”

He and Padma exchanged angry glances. Then Dean returned his focus to the group around the table. Natalie held her tongue in check.

“They got a hold of a few zee, started... mucking about with damn things. Thought they had it contained, but... well, zee are zee and they like to bite, don't they. Turned a whole cell of Sol Coligo into slaggers, then it got worse from there. Right about that time the zee started coming up from the Thames. London got infected, as you say. We were trying to keep Bromley, Beckham, and Downham in order…”

“I think they need the map again,” Padma said when Dean paused for breath.

Without even looking, Major Thomas retrieved his wand from pocket somewhere inside his jacket, and then waved it over his shoulder. A map of London appeared on the wall. The towns in question began to glow red. More towns began to turn red and pointed north toward London. The Thames River also began to glow. Natalie watched as the zee plague, for she knew it to be just that, spread from the river, points south, and even points north. From the west the menace approached as well, swelling in size as civilians got turned. The zee horde seemed to converge on London.

“Why London?” Savini, the Marine doctor, grunted.

“We turned hiding in London into an art form,” Dean replied and he sounded hollow. “Over a hundred thousand of us magi lived there, worked there... gathered, made a life for ourselves right under your noses.”

“And the zee, being attracted to you...” Arliss supplied the answer without completing the statement.

“Right in one,” Padma grimly congratulated him.

“They came at us from every direction,” Dean obliquely agreed. “We heard everything from Brighton to Canterbury got overrun. Reports were things got bad in Oxford. It seemed to be happening everywhere, and each time a town or city got turned, they started coming toward London. Some of the members of the Department of Mysteries started to piece it together. They called up to the Aurors and asked for some of our best agents to send out...”

“And how long did it take London to fall?” Colonel Lange deftly injected herself into his tale.

“What? How long?”

“Dean, focus,” Padma urged her friend.

“By the time we figured out they... the zee were converging on London, it was too late,” he said while turning his head to stare at the map he created. “They started showing up in every part of the city. It got worse and worse. Some got into the Ministry buildings, and, well... that was a feast for them. From there they got into the flue network even more, and then the damn zed really started popping up all over the isles. We lost England and didn't even realize it.”

“Dean, what is the flue network?” Major Garner inquired.

Dean Thomas stared at him with empty eyes. The brighter green of his camouflage duty uniform contrasted with the drab greens or variegated blues used by the US military. As a result, the outfit appeared to frame his head from the neck upward. It made both he and Padma Bray stand out even while it supposedly made then blend in with the rest of the military personnel.

“We connect bigger fireplaces together so people who didn't like being mixed with mug... normies could transport safely from home or other secure locations. It kept remote regions in contact...” Padma tried to explain.

“Jesus Christ!” Savini burst. “You mean to say the zee got into a fucking country-wide transportation system? Is that how they got around so fast?”

“Not just in England, mister!” Padma roared back at him. “China, India, Japan, Egypt, Pretoria, Moscow, Kiev, Chicago…”

“Holy shit,” Arliss hissed. “The contagion vectors!”

“Precisely,” Amanda Lange said in a cool tone. “In every country where the magi had a flue network or something like, the zee propagated. We saw it happened, but could never explain it. Now we can.”

“Why didn't they shut it down?” Natalie queried, and did nothing to disguise her shock.

“It'd be like trying to shut down your Internet. How easy it to stop that thing? It's run by a form of power it'd take me weeks to explain even the basics to you,” Padma argued.

“Is your network global?” Randy blurted and seemed to ignore her statements.

“No, not like that 'Net thing,” Dean grumbled, “but every country has... had it's own system.”

Natalie sat back as her mouth fell open. In her mind she crafted a worldwide map and watched the spread of the zee plague. They never could account for how some isolated spots got infected, and now the answer lay naked before her. Prior to the start of that meeting, she still harbored serious doubts about the reality of magic, yet her mind turned as she realized what role the strange power of the magi people played in the transmission of the pandemic. Questions that nagged her for years found solutions. She stared at the two magic users and could not decide if she felt pity or anger at what befell their communities.

“And London, being completely networked, fell in record time,” Garner theorized.

“Weeks, mate; not months,” Major Thomas angrily confirmed. “From the time they surfaced in the Thames to when they made it to M25, it took only twenty days... and that included the military and our people fighting back as hard as they could. The whole city got took over in one day short of three weeks.”

“Good lord,” Nina whispered.

“And what the hell were you doing during all of this?” Lou charged with the question.

“Fighting for my fucking life, mate!” Dean yelled at him and the lights flared. “We got overrun by the zee coming out of Petts Wood. Two-thirds of my office got wiped out in one day as they pushed us north toward Greenwich. That's were I lost my family!”

Tears streamed down the dark cheeks as he made the admission. Padma reached over with her right hand and laid it on his left forearm. Dean flinched, but did not jerk his limb away. Natalie knew commiseration when she saw it, and these two suffered similar personal tragedies. To her left, Natalie could hear Lou Savini swearing under his breath. In many respects she thought the man perfectly represented his branch of the military. Moreover, she could guess what he thought.

“These people are not our enemies, Lou,” she cautioned her colleague.

“Sure the fuck sounds like enemies to me,” the man hotly rejoined.

“Enough, Major Savini,” Colonel Lange commanded him. “We have very little intel on what they experienced or how events transpired. Major Bray and Thomas...”

“That's bullshit! You can't just commission them in the field after this...”

“Stand down, Lou,” Lange said in such a low and menacing tone Natalie felt herself trying to comply with the order. “These two only told you part of their stories. I've heard a lot more, and I sure as shit would've aimed for colonel for both of them given what they faced, how they acted, and how much we owe them from bringing this information to us... and at great personal cost I thought you of all people would appreciate!”

Savini turned a bright red, but Natalie did not believe it came from embarrassment for one second.

“Bray fought for eleven days, almost entirely on her own, to make it to a town... which one?” Lange started and paused for clarification.

“Newbridge, ma'am,” Padma quietly answered.

“Newbridge, on foot and alone with zee hounding her every step!”

“She was leading them, Amanda, and you know it,” Garner said in an uncharacteristically hostile manner.

“She didn't know that at the time, Jerry, and because of what she faced and managed to survive, a lot of territory west of Cardiff had time to prepare, especially the port towns,” his commanding officer said, taking him to task. “Major Bray's seen more action in one month than you've seen in three years... and she's seen it month after month after month.”

The colonel's head then swung in the direction of Major Savini: “And, Lou, I'd put my money on her over you any day of the week. She managed to make it for three days after she lost her wand. How far would you make it through fully infested territory armed with only a pencil?”

The same surprise that registered on Savini's face reflected in many of the others sitting around the table, including Dean Thomas. He gaped at her. She nodded at him. An oppressive silence followed in the wake of the colonel's dressing down of the major.

“The time for recriminations is long past over. We need facts. They have facts. We've got a rare opportunity to maybe figure out an avenue of attack, and I sure as hell don't want to fucking waste it arguing about who should be blamed for what!” She railed at her team. “If this joint effort fails because you can't get over the fact these two have powers you don't, then we might as well just crawl into a hole and wait to die. We – and by 'we' I mean the human race – don't have a lot of options at this point. We might get a small window of military dominance, but don't forget there are hundreds of millions, billions of zee out there we have to face, and I don't think we have enough bullets or people to get the job done.”

By this time the colonel breathed heavily, and her friend and junior officer could see the depth of the Amanda Lange's anger. Only twice before in the last decade did Natalie ever see the woman get so rankled. It served to remind Natalie that her commanding officer took this with more seriousness than even she imagined. Natalie let the words sink into her brain.

“And before you go pointing fingers again, Lou... Jerry, let me tell you right now the zee plague started as combined mission between normies and magi. If you want to blame someone, make sure you're staring in a mirror at the same time!”

Although it did not happen, Natalie imagined she heard a collective gasp.

“I'm taking a half hour break, and I want that to sink into your skulls!”

Colonel Amanda Lange stood and roughly pushed the chair behind her with enough force it toppled over. Without waiting for a salute, she turned and stomped away from the table. Caldwell and Ramirez possessed enough presence of mind to stand and salute. The rest watched her storm out of the room. The remaining nine people began to look at one another. Arliss Caldwell glanced at the female magi.

“Did you really lose your wand?” He asked.

Major Bray nodded and said: “Yes. During the battle to save Worcester so Coventry wouldn't fall.”

Due to whatever magic Dean Thomas employed, the map re-centered itself, and the two places mentioned lit up.

“And you were really alone?” Major Thomas asked with renewed awe.

“I got separated from my group, and... most of them never made it to Coventry.”

Dean Thomas turned to face the rest of the group and asked: “Any of you ever hear of the Birmingham Black Run?”

“Oh, my god!” Nina quipped and raised a hand to her mouth, so it seemed at least one of them understood the reference.

“Right, well, Padma went through that, and it was as bad as anything I saw in London or on the way to Sheerness.”

“What happened?” Garner inquired and sounded much more reasonable.

“Wolverhampton and Derby is what happened,” Dean Thomas said.

Natalie then heard a horror story that rivaled the worst of what she learned about or witnessed in either Los Angeles or Chicago. Dean did not spare any details, and Padma would sometimes add her own personal recollections. Mostly she remained silent and stared into empty space. However, it amazed Natalie Padma could continue the fight after the loss of her family in Senghenydd. Then again, she mused, perhaps the loss itself fueled her need for retaliation. Both the magi faced situations no one else in the room, even Lou Savini, ever did. It proved even hard to imagine for Natalie.


	5. Chapter 5

During the break an alarm went off, and Major Garner ran out of the training room without explanation. Ten minutes later a junior grade lieutenant arrived to tell them the rest of the meeting would be postponed until after lunch due both the colonel and the major being needed elsewhere for an emergency meeting. The remaining attendees stared at one another for a moment, and then began to stand and gather their belongings.

“Major Thomas?” Major Caldwell said the name as a question and with respect. “Would you like to have lunch with me? I'd very much appreciate hearing more about what you witnessed when London got firebombed. We sort of went off the rails there.”

Dean Thomas gave the Air Force major a long scrutinizing look. After half a minute, Padma elbowed her friend. The man shot her an annoyed expression.

“Just go, Dean. These are decent muggles. They're trying to understand us for the most part and we need to understand them,” she wisely cajoled him.

“Yeah, all right,” Dean agreed.

Arliss Caldwell nodded his head once, and extended an arm inviting Dean to lead the way. Half way to the door, Caldwell's tenor voice could be heard asking the British magi a question, and one that caused Major Thomas to lean back in surprise. To her right, Natalie heard Nina make a coughing sound.

“Would either of you like to join me for lunch?” Commander Ramirez offered.

Padma glanced at Natalie who replied: “Might be nice to have some girl talk for a little while. Thanks, Nina.”

“Sounds lovely,” Padma added and agreed.

“Guess that leaves you and me,” Randy Miller said to Lou Savini.

“Girl talk?” The Marine half-mockingly inquired.

“If you insist,” Miller deftly turned it around on the man.

Savini laughed, clapped Miller once on the shoulder, and grabbed his briefing packet from the table. The two men ambled out of the room. Natalie gazed at her now lunch companions.

“Commissary or we can go to my quarters and I can heat up what's left of the paella I made yesterday? I don't know how to cook for less than six people,” She presented the options.

“I've three-quarters of a bottle of some rosé we didn't finish that I could bring,” Natalie chimed in.

“All I've got is my appetite,” Padma said in a rather lonely manner.

“That's all you need to bring,” Nina gamely replied.

Padma smiled a real smile. The three women collected their belongings and began to exit the room. Natalie found herself rather excited to get to know the magi woman in an informal setting. She fully planned on thanking Nina for her quick thinking. As the trio headed out, Padma asked how two women became doctors in such a male-dominated environment. It set the tone for the next hour and a half.

After the meal and the pleasant conversation, mostly centered on what to expect from their male counterparts as the team finished the briefing sessions and began to real work, Natalie returned to her quarters to await notice on when they would reconvene. She found it both expected and surprising when a heavy knock arrived at her door, and Colonel Lange stood on the other side. Natalie invited Amanda in and closed the door.

“We lost Osaka,” the senior officer said without any preamble as she entered. “There's just too damn many zee in that congested city to mount an effective defense let alone an offense. We...”

Amanda stopped and wheeled around. Her friend stared at her with naked worry. Seldom did Amanda, even during the worst days three years prior, begin speaking without checking he emotions. The news rattled the colonel, and Natalie decided silence would allow the woman to continue at whatever pace suited her.

“Nat, I was serious in meeting about losing this war. We'll probably ended up firebombing Osaka to try and keep it contained,” Amanda said in a trembling voice as she sank into the armchair in the living room.

“No other option?” Natalie asked, but she hardly thought any might surface. She stood instead of sitting.

“Unless we start actively working with Bray and Thomas, and I mean as of six months ago, we might end up setting the world on fire. Natalie, you know the stats, and you know the odds...”

“For every one infected, they pass it on to at least three more... in moderately populated areas.”

“So do you get why China, India, Mexico, Sao Paulo, Moscow... Jakarta... are all mostly lost?”

“It's the exponential nature of the threat. Everyone wearing the slightest bit of brass is taught that from day one,” Natalie tried to reassure her friend she truly understood the numerical threat.

The colonel nodded her head and then started down at the floor before saying: “This might be our last, best hope. It we can take what they know and combine it with what we know, maybe...”

“But we don't really know what they know, Mandy,” the lieutenant colonel countered.

“That changes in fifteen minutes,” Amanda said, and then looked up with a sheep visage, “and that's why I came here: to let you know the meeting is starting soon, but I wanted to vent a little first.”

“Why not with Garner?”

“'Cause you're much better at separating your emotions from your thoughts. He lost a number of friends in Osaka, and it hit him hard. We sent a medical company to support the operation and, well... a hundred to one in street fighting.”

A grimace crossed Natalie's face. While she appreciated the faith and trust her friend placed in her, she also knew Amanda Lange grieved along with Major Garner. Although often relegated as support, medical services routinely made the difference between failure and success. Moreover, the loss of trained doctors and medics came at a much higher price than the loss of infantry, although Natalie thought any loss proved one to high. It would takes months, if not years, to cobble together an effective replacement medical team ready for field duty. Once more the question of numbers came into play. The zee only had to bite a person to increase their ranks; whereas, each branch of the military needed to expend weeks to effectively add one to their side. Furthermore, the zee did not need any equipment. Whatever they needed got transmitted through the bite. Her mind bubbled for a second.

“Their saliva glands don't even work,” she absentmindedly said to herself.

“Natalie... what?” Amanda asked and narrowed her eyes.

Natalie, despite wanting to commiserate over the loss of the troops, could not stop her brain when confronted with a medical conundrum. While not a new thought, she never before considered the full peculiarity of what now sat as nakedly odd in her brain. She stared at her commanding officer for a few seconds while her mind tried to sort through it.

“I know that look, Nat, so spit it out. Two minds... exponential, you know?” Colonel Lange prodded her.

“We should've doubted solanum a long time ago,” Natalie openly mused. “The saliva glands stop working and go necrotic on termination of functions, and we thought it was a virus because a virus can survive without a nutrient medium and even after dehydration... not like bacteria. I mean... so what are the zee actually transmitting when they bite a person?”

Amanda Lange blinked at her friend and subordinate for a few moments before saying: “This is why we need to work together, because I don't have a single goddamn idea on how to answer that question.”

The colonel all but jumped to her feet after a count of three. Natalie jumped backward in response. A hard light seemed to glint in the older woman's eyes. The smile on her face did not convey humor.

“Hold onto that thought until we get to the Q-and-A after the presentation. I want to watch how people react,” Amanda said in low tone. “It's about time both sides started re-thinking this.”

Natalie's head rose up and down in agreement. Amanda barely gave her time to retrieve her briefing materials before hauling the lieutenant colonel out of the quarters and to the meeting. During the short walk, they did not speak. Natalie could see the gears spinning in her friend's head. Moreover, she continued to probe the improbable nature of the solanum virus and became even more convinced, if possible, the virus did not and never existed. The agent of the zee transformation rested in something else, somewhere they never thought or could examine. When they reached the meeting room, six people rose to salute including Major Garner. Bray and Thomas simply watched them enter.

“At ease,” Colonel Lange said, but she smirked at the two British personnel who never budged. “We're dispensing with the personal narratives, because...”

Natalie could almost feel Amanda steady herself to deliver the news.

“Osaka fell early this morning, and we lost the company we sent in support.”

The immediate ashen faces of the standard military officers spoke for them. Jerry Garner looked the most distressed. The two magi frowned. Natalie could see the angry reserve in both of them. This type of news did not come as a shock to either. Amanda took her seat to the left of the witch and wizard. When she sat, the rest seemed to deflate into their chairs. All eyes remained on the commanding officer.

“I knew a lot of those people. At least half trained somewhere on this island, and they assembled here for quick dispatch. These were our brothers and sisters, people, and this…,” the colonel's voice caught for a moment before she coughed once and continued. “This is why we are here. This is why the bullshit from this morning has to stop. I don't care if you believe Dean and Padma can do what they say they can do. I honestly, truly don't give one single crap about what you believe.”

Several sets of eyes shifted downward, but Natalie could not discern what they might be thinking.

“What I need is what you know: your skills as doctors, researchers... your science,” she said in at volume everyone strained to hear. “I know this flies in the face of everything you were taught, so I have one piece of advice: get over yourselves and move on.”

Only Lou Savini appeared to stiffen at the rebuke. It appeared fitting the Marine representative would present the most difficulty in accepting the new circumstances. Without the lunch she shared with Padma Bray that day, Natalie might also react in a similar manner. However, she found Padma an inviting and warm person who, by all appearances, did not actively seek to deceive. Natalie found the woman almost awkwardly truthful.

“Yes, Lou, I am looking at you,” Colonel Lange continued. “This operation needs your particular gifts in nuclear medicine. I hand-picked you even though we don't often agree or see eye-to-eye... and it's because I completely respect what you can do.”

“Ma'am,” Savini mumbled.

“All of you got hand-picked because of your achievements in your respective fields... and because I know most of you personally. Randy, we'll remedy that in the next few weeks. General Paternac said your name without even thinking about it when asked, so you got in on qualifications alone.”

“Thank you, colonel,” Randy Miller said through a small, pleased smile.

“And we all know why Bray and Thomas are here…

“You threatened to deport me to Pyongyang,” Thomas said without missing a beat. “Well, not you personally, but that wanker Nesbit.”

“Dean!” Padma chastised her friend.

“We did threaten him, Major Bray. He got too used to running, so we needed to limit to where he could run. Not a lot of safe havens left for your kind,” Colonel Lange said, and her voiced sounded icy.

Major Thomas looked as though he wanted nothing more than to whip out his wand and do something nasty with it. His hands twitched, as Natalie previously noted, and it appeared to be a reflexive and spontaneous reaction. After a few seconds, the colonel scanned the faces of the unit.

“What you're about to see come to us from Major Thomas with a little tweaking thrown in by Major Bray. He won't tell us where he got this... information, but...”

“Pensieve,” Dean Thomas muttered.

“Yes, you've said before, but being melancholy...”

“No, Colonel,” Padma sharply said, but her eyes remained fixed on Thomas. “It's a device we use to view collected memories, and Dean... you mean these were extracted?”

Dean Thomas nodded.

“Did he agree?”

The man nodded again and said: “He was dying, Padma, and we didn't have a healer. That's why he kept saying to take them quick. It wasn't because we were torturing him like you thought we did.”

The rest of the assembled listened to the unusual exchange in silence.

“That, ah, might be a later discussion between you two, but for now these people need to see it,” Colonel Lange redirected them. She lifted her head a bit and said in a loud voice: “Willis, hit start!”

A rectangle of light appeared behind the colonel's head, and she slid to one side to get out of the light path. A powerful projector sent the beam from the other side of the room. As the presentation began, the lights dimmed. Apparently a subordinate manned a control room. After single beep, a card displaying the security control markings appeared. The code told her a death sentence awaited any who violated the secrecy of the information.

“This is what we got from Ron Weasley when he returned,” Dean's voice echoed through the air.

“Did anyone from the Ministry approve?” A shaky female voice asked.

“They sent him and Harry. Look at what those two managed to do when they were kids, so it just made sense!”

In the room lit by only the glow of a static image, Natalie saw Padma grin, but sadness tinged the edges. Then the red card dissolved. The image of a man with dark hair and glasses appeared and seemed to be shot with a hand-held camera. The man turned. Green eyes peered at them.

“Is this the place, Ron?” The man brusquely asked.

The field of view tilted downward in a slightly sickening manner as if they rode a roller coaster. A map held by a hand came into focus. Natalie quickly scanned it, picking out several telling names.

“Look, mate, the guy said follow the river west of Bagashang...” the one holding the map started to say.

“It's not pronounced like that, Ron,” the other man grunted.

“Sod off. I don't care how you say it, but we got to where the two rivers joined and we've been climbing up this bloody mountain for half a day,” the one called Ron rumbled in an angry voice. “There's the overhang and this is where the trail ends, so the damn door's got to be 'round here some place!”

After the talk, the view changed again, swinging around to look at the rocky exposures.

“What else did he say?” The seeming leader of the two inquired.

Ron looked at the man, huffed, and said: “It was all some kind of bullocked Tolkien talk, Harry. Face the wall, wait for the setting sun, and call out to the guardian of the western gate... or some such muck like that.”

“No spells?” Harry pressed.

“What do you think it means to call out to the guardian of the western gate?”

Harry frowned. To any watching, the banter between them bespoke of friendly animosity of two people who did not want to be in their current location. Natalie also noted they wore extremely sturdy clothing. The jackets looked to be made of heavy canvas, a good choice that offered both some protection from bites and flexibility. Time and again they heard stories about people encumbered by body armor who did not survive because it bogged them down. From what could be seen as the view moved wildly about at times, the two also wore brand new blue jeans, again a sensible choice.

“How do we call out to the guardian of the western gate?”

Ron huffed again and very slowly recited: “Dǎkāi nǐ de gēbo, huānyíng rìluò.”

“What the hell does that mean... and is that the correct pronunciation? You know it won't work if you don't say it right!”

“Listen, mate, how 'bout I punch you in the mouth and then you can say it,” Ron grumbled. “I rehearsed that bloody line for three days with Xifeng, and you know she used that rotten cane every time I made a mistake, so don't give me any grief 'bout how I pronounce it 'til you can do better!”

The image paused, and Dean Thomas' disembodied voice floated over their heads.

“They argue like this a lot, and it took them another day to find the exact location. Ron pronounced the spell correctly, and they found the door when the sun was parallel with it. He was right about it being like something Tolkien would write. Maybe he got it from them or vice versa, I don't know, but Ron got the door open...”

“And the flood of inferi came out,” the unknown woman stated.

“Want to see?”

The scene shifted. Two round doors outline in gold took over the center of the frame. When the picture began move, it began with Ron reciting the words. The golden lines briefly glowed. Even when the doors began to part and open, the sound of the zee became noticeable. Both Ron and the man named Harry scrambled for higher ground. Suddenly a mass of zee came spilling out of the doorway. Ron's arm appeared in the lower portion of the image. Harry ran toward it as fast as he could. When he grabbed Ron's hand, a hiss and pop filled the audio as everything appeared to twist in on itself.

A second later the view changed and they looked down on the zee that came out of the door in the side of the sloping mountain. What at first appeared to be swarm proved to be little over a dozen. Everyone in the room watching the strange footage, however, understood just how dangerous even a single zee could be.

“Bloody hell,” Ron's voice echoed as the zee below them slowed and looked around. “How'd them slaggers get in there? I mean... they said no one's been here in over two years.”

“No, Ron, I think the real question is who locked them in there... or who were they before this happened,” Harry's voice rejoined.

The people watching knew. Natalie rapidly assessed the situation. The zee wore Chinese military uniforms. Given the name of the location and the spell Ron chanted, it all fit together. Yet no one could explain why the Chinese army personnel got locked behind a clearly magical door. Questions piled up in Natalie's head as she squinted her eyes.

“Were these the first?” The unnamed woman spoke through the speakers.

“Couldn't say, ma'am, and even Ron didn't know,” Dean Thomas answered in a remarkably deferential tone. “I've thought this enough times to say I think these were some of the firs victims... the first ones to be turned.”

“How did they do with this group?” The commanding female, by the manner of her speech, inquired.

The first shot that rang out caused everyone watching to jump. Ron's arm came up again, but this time he held a long-barreled pistol. The man clearly looked down the sights and took aim on one of the zee. The gun went off. The the opposite side of the zee's head flew outward as it dropped. The remaining undead things turned toward the sound of the gun. Another shot report echoed from Ron's left. Another zee got dispatched. By the time the last remaining zee fell, and by that time the group of them tried to scramble up the side of the hill, only four shots got wasted. Natalie nodded in approval.

“Why are they using guns?” Lou Savini asked.

The image movement halted.

“Yeah, why are they? What about their magic? How come they didn't just... poof the zee somewhere else?” Randy Miller added.

“How did they get to be such good shots?” Natalie inquired since her colleagues already disrupted the presentation.

“Nat, you always ask the tricky ones,” their commanding officer said in a nearly entertained fashion. “Major Thomas or Major Bray, do either of you have any answers?”

In the darkened room everyone turned to the two British magic users. Bray and Thomas glanced at each other for a moment. They seemed to confer in silence for a couple of seconds.

“The Department of Mysteries figured out the inferi... zee are attracted to magic. I saw one of the briefing sheets given to Harry and Ron when they got the assignment, and it specifically told them not to use magic on these things,” Padma Bray explained and barely looked away from her friend.

“They were trained how to shoot,” Dean continued when she paused. “They went through some pretty intensive training as part of this mission, but look at the gun in Ron's hand. It's not entirely free of magic.”

The image reversed, indicating the operator of the device paid close attention to what got said in the room, until a fairly clean side view of the gun came into focus. Natalie saw what she missed before. Tiny, barely discernible writing shimmered along the edge of barrel. If one did not know about on first viewing, it would easily be dismissed as light glinting off the metal. Those in the room, after a day spent with the witch and wizard, did not dismiss it.

“The spells on the guns made them highly accurate. They were pretty good shots before they headed out, but this just helped ensure they wouldn't waste bullets. Ron was the better shot between them,” Major Thomas told them.

Natalie did not overlook the verb tense, and it went hand-in-hand with the change in Dean's mood. Of course, he already stated the man named Ron died.

“Let's save the questions until we get to the end of this presentation,” Amanda did more than suggest. “Although, I'm glad to see this struck you as odd, too, given, ah, what we now know.”

A dissatisfied snort issued from Natalie's left, and she made an accurate guess as to who issued it. She looked up at the screen. The image jumped forward to the point when the questions about the firearms arose. Ron continued to aim his gun forward and, surprisingly, steady.

“See any more?” His voice inquired.

“Looks clear, but stay alert, Ron. There's no telling how many vivens mortua are still in there.”

Natalie riffled through her mental Latin dictionary, and came up with a reasonable translation. She rocked her head from side to side as she considered the term living dead somewhat of a misnomer. These thing did not live in any conventional sense from a medical point of view. Mobile dead, she thought, always felt more appropriate.

She returned to watching as Ron and Harry chose a path to climb down the rather steep incline toward the open door. Ron's head, given that he wore some type of recording device, swiveled around and centered on each and every form on the ground. None moved.

“Is your torch working?” Harry asked from somewhere off to the right as they reached the plain where the bodies lay scattered.

“No, mine bunged up on the trail. Is yours?” Ron replied.

“Same here. Luminos?”

“I guess, but you know what Teddy said: these dead will be on us 'cause of it.”

“So you's rather go in there in the dark just holding these ruddy things?” Harry bluntly countered and came into view just in time for Ron to see him waving the pistol around.

“Good point, mate,” Ron agreed. “But I'm still keeping this gun out. We know this will kill 'em.”

“Yeah, and the sound attracts them, too,” Harry rumbled and did not sound confident.

The two cautiously proceeded toward the door. They saw that Ron carried the gun in his right hand and his wand in the left. After muttering a word, the tip of the wand began to glow in a clean, white light. Natalie immediately wondered what range of illumination it provided, and she got her answer when the two inched inward. An area of roughly three and a half meters lit up around them. On the walls they could see dark hand prints and other stains.

“Core! That smell!” Ron complained.

“It's human rot, Ron. Put that scented ointment on under your nose like they told us,” Harry responded.

The image froze.

“Did they find any actual dead who were not reanimated?” The person with apparent rank over Dean queried.

“They found a number of corpses as they walked through, but... they didn't come across any of the vivens mortua except... well, you'll see,” Major Thomas in the presentation told her.

The frame jumped and the scene commenced at a different location. Harry led the way, the glowing wand held aloft, and the gun firmly grasped in the other hand. Natalie noticed the man used his left hand for the gun, so she assumed him to be left handed. After few agonizing seconds of hearing nothing but heavy breathing as the two walked forward, they stopped in front of a double door sealed with a metal bar through the handles and lots of debris stacked up against it. Once more, everyone understood what it meant. Next to the door they saw part of a name plate. The two in the scene focused on it.

“Wait as second,” Harry said. “Nox. Ostendam verba.”

His light went out, but Ron's wand provided sufficient illumination. The Chinese glyphs on the plaque attached to the wall blurred and rearranged themselves. Harry and Ron gasped, as did Padma Bray, when the translation appeared.

“Bloody hell! Magic and spell recombination! What is wrong with these wankers?” Ron exclaimed in both disgust and shock.

“It's not like we don't have our own research division. Look at what your dad did in his shed for all those years,” Harry rebutted.

“Well, yeah, there is that.”

Ron sounded more humble. Harry's wand lit up again after he intoned a word. The two then moved toward the heap blocking the doors. They stood there for a long while before either of them spoke.

“We're going in there, right?” Ron asked, but it sounded like he did not want an answer.

“'Fraid so, Ron, but why aren't there more of the inferi around? Were they all just hanging 'round the door waiting for us to try and break in?” Harry told him and then offered a troubling series of questions.

Ron then silently held up his left arm and pointed at the blockade with the gun held in his grip.

“Right,” Harry muttered.

The action cut away, and the two suddenly stood before the unblocked doors. The metal bar remained lodged in the handles. The image froze, and they heard nothing.

“Sorry 'bout that,” the human form of Dean Thomas said. “Something got mucked up in the audio, and you can't hear the questions. One of the ministers from Magical Law Enforcement was asking the questions. Seems not everyone knew about this mission. Here she was asking about this place. We think it was an old Chinese People's Army secret monitoring station that got converted for this purpose.”

“Typical,” Colonel Lange grumbled loud enough for everyone to hear.

 

“Ron and Harry's audio is okay since it came from Ron's memories,” the man told the colonel.

Natalie glanced around as her colleagues did the same. It dawned on her the face of the one called Ron never got revealed in the footage. The strange motions of the supposed camera made sense if she correctly guessed what she actually saw. These images came directly from Ron's memories, and Natalie forced herself to accept it as the truth, thus they saw everything through his eyes. Natalie could not for a moment understand how the magi could procure memories. She added the disquieting thought the long list of questions in her mind.

“Fine, you pull the bar and hold the left door while I open the right one,” Harry snapped at Ron when the memory footage began to roll again. “Count of three... like one, two three, and then go.”

Ron acted while Harry yelled at him. He slid the bar out while Harry darted into his visual line of sight to throw his body against the door. The green-eyed man seemed positively furious. He scowled at Ron.

“Ever hear of practice,” he grunted while pressing his body against the door.

The two men lapsed into silence. After several seconds it became obvious nothing pushed against the other side. No one heard any groans or thumping that usually accompanied active zee. Harry stared at Ron.

“Maybe they all died... or whatever it is that the mortua do when they stop... unliving,” Ron's voice stated and amended his own theory when his friend frowned.

“Ah, sure, Ron,” Harry said with obvious sarcasm. He then put on a more serious expression and continued: “All right, I am going to open the door. You stay on your side and get ready to shoot if anything comes after me. Got it?”

The field of view vibrated wildly and made it look as though Harry jumped up and down in the air. It did not take much to guess Ron nodded his head.

“If you shoot me, I swear to the Sedai I will bind and leave you here.”

“Okay, alright, fine,” Ron huffed. “I won't shoot you... much.”

In the midst of the tense moment, Harry's mouth twitched into a grin. Without saying anything further, he faced the door against which he leaned. Then Harry quietly mouthed a countdown while raising his hand that held the gun. When he reached the third number in the counting, he simultaneously pulled on the door and stepped backward. Nothing came out to attack him, but his face took on a horrified countenance.

“Harry?” Ron nervously inquired.

“Dear god,” Harry whispered and started to walk into the open door. “What in the seven hells were they doing in here.”

Ron abandoned his post and trotted after the other man. As he angled through the door behind Harry, everyone watching in the room instinctively craned their heads to getter a better look. Over Harry's shoulder the picture began to emerge. It defied belief, except the military medical officers already met two magi. Both Ron and Harry stopped in their tracks and surveyed the room. Natalie felt a wave of revulsion.

Lying on five of the eight metal autopsy tables were thin, nearly skeletal corpses. Each slowly turned its head and stared at the intruders. None made a sound. Not one opened its mouth as if to try and bite. The whitened eyes simply gazed forward. Their legs began to move, giving an indication they would approach Ron and Harry, except they lay strapped down to the tables.

“These are real inferi,” Dean said.

“Not the zed... zee things you might think they are,” Padma chimed in, but she could not hide the disgust in her voice.

“Pause it, Willis,” Amanda Lange ordered. She glanced around when the footage halted. “You'd better explain, Major Bray.”

“In our world, the dead can be animated to carry out a specific function. This is dark, dark magic, and hardly anyone ever tries. It takes a lot of skill and preparation to make the spell work... plus you need access to corpses,” the Hindi British woman explained and clearly found the practice distasteful.

“Just trying to complete it can kill the witch or wizard if the enchantment backfires,” Dean Thomas joined in. “But notice they way the inferi acted: they didn't try to rush and eat Harry and Ron.”

“It's actually very difficult to get an inferi to kill. They're... limited in what a wizard can make them do. Usually who ever does this creates a lot at one time because they work better in a group when they all have the same instruction,” Padma stated in a low voice.

Natalie snatched peek at her comrades. They each looked stunned by what they saw and the explanation of the images. However, Natalie knew the memory she watched did not show zee at that particular point. The gaunt forms – basically skeletons with desiccated flesh covering bones – barely looked human and nothing at all like zee.

“The other thing you need to know about inferi: they're normally created from dead that aren't fresh. They need to be, I guess, dried out a bit before they're useful,” Dean said as though he read Natalie's mind.

“Remember that movie some blokes made back in the 1930s about Egyptian mummies coming back to life?” Padma asked.

“Sure,” Nina Ramirez answered. “The Mummy and The Curse of the Mummy.”

“Well, those films were based on real events,” the female magi bluntly stated. “Carter and Carnarvon never encountered the inferi the Egyptians created. That happened a few years before and after they discovered King Tut.”

“So it's an old spell?” Arliss Caldwell inquired as if he sat in university lecture.

“Very old. Some of the more powerful banned spells go back thousands of years. They, ah, didn't know discretion like we do today,” Padma replied.

“What's the connection to the zee?” Savini barked out his question.

“Lange?” Dean Thomas inappropriately addressed the colonel.

“Major Thomas...” Major Garner started.

“Jerry, just leave it for now. We can work on titles later. This is a little more important,” Colonel Lange forestalled her officer. “Will, roll it again!”

The eerily silent inferi came back to life as the memory began to play out. Natalie could not stop the involuntary shudder she experienced, but it did not convey the same dread she often felt in the face of real zee. She saw the way Ron and Harry tried to walk around the inferi that, if she needed to be truthful, did not appear entirely threatening. The white lighting from their wands made the creatures appear a grim gray-green color.

“What were they doing with these?” Ron openly speculated, and his voice took on the same quality as Padma's when she spoke of them.

“Experimenting it looks like,” Harry stated the obvious. “But... why... how?”

The two separated and both tried to walk wide circles around the inferi. Harry and Ron picked up various implements from trays, sometimes creating small clouds of dust. Ron walked further back and toward the right while Harry aimed left. They went to workbenches covered with wide array of instruments. Ron picked up several sheets of paper and shook the dust off of it.

“What's the translation spell again, mate?” Ron called out while glancing over his shoulder.

“Ostendam verba,” Harry dutifully told him

Ron repeated the words while aiming his now dimmed wand at it. Afterward he reignited the tip, although it did not burn in any conventional sense. Then he stooped over and began to scan the sheets. The image on the screen flickered. It steadied and the two stood in different spots at their respective benches.

“I'm up to test thirty-eight, and they say they were getting close,” Ron said as he scanned the page in his hand.

“Test for what?” Harry growled the words.

“Haven't the foggiest, but it does involve the inferi.”

“How?” The green-eyed man grumbled.

Once more the scene jumped forward.

“Oh, cripes and fuck me into a muggle!” Harry yelled when the action continued.

Ron whipped around, both gun and wand raised, and aimed them at his friend. Harry, hunched over, shook his head violently as he read something. Ron walked over to him at a fast pace.

“Do you know who these blokes are, Ron?”

“Not a clue, mate.”

“Chinese army,” Harry said the words in a distant fashion.

“Well, we already knew that, then, didn't we,” Ron retorted and did not sound impressed.

“Wait, wait! Listen to this,” the only face in sight held a notebook up in front of his bespectacled eyes. “Lui Han Wei... wait, I know that name.”

“International Confederation of Magic Conference 'round five years ago. One of the head delegates from the People's Magical Republic of China,” Ron told him

Harry twisted his face toward his friend and asked: “You were there?”

“Part of the Diei Solis investigation...”

“Man, do I hate those people,” Harry interrupted.

“Yeah, well, so does everyone else. Lui Han Wei represented the Chinese Division of Magic Control at the conference. So why is his name in that book?”

“Say here Wei approved the combination of spells regarding seeking and... some sort of defense to be... Merlin's Beard! They were trying to get inferi to hunt down rogue witches and wizards 'cause they wouldn't need to sleep.”

“That's bloody illegal by international treaty and statute!” Ron hollered.

“Oh, god! Oh, god!” Harry intoned as he continued to read. “Oh, shit! Ron! Ron, they really made these things!”

“The inferi? Course they did.”

“No, the other things... the vivens mortua.”

Harry turned with an ashen face and gaped at his friend. His throat bobbed once. Then he lifted the notebook a little and read aloud: “Modus inferi two-zero-three is self-directing. It's head and eyes follow us wherever we walk in the lab. It senses magic. However, it also appears aggressive. Each time one of the team members gets too close, the modus inferi attempts to grab the person. It also snapped it's mouth at Shi Chun. She wonders if the... I don't understand this word, it didn't translate.”

“It tried to bite someone?” Ron said and horror filled his question.

Harry's face twitched back and forth as he read. Ron waited in silence. Several minutes later, Harry looked up and all color drained from his face. His eyes and mouth sagged.

“They made another, except this time they used one of us and not a muggle,” he spoke in a hollow voice. “This modus inferi... overreacted to the spells... became wild, uncontrollable. It attacked the other inferi they created. It tried to eat them.”

“The dead don't eat the dead?” Ron rejoined, and he sounded equally appalled.

Once again the only fully visible person in the presentation continued to read. Ron leaned forward, but the cribbed style of writing made it difficult to discern individual words while they were upside down and wavered a bit under the power of the translation spell. After nearly five minutes, Harry dropped the book. It seemed to burn his hands.

“Ron, we've got to get out of here,” he raced through the sentence.

“Harry, what? What is it?” Ron begged.

“The other inferi the modus one bit, they turned... became like it: violent, aggressive. Ron, don't you get what they did?”

“Didn't read the book. You did.”

“Oh, cripes. Ron, these undead creatures they're... designed to hunt us down, except something went wrong. Wei said they reached out only for us and not the muggles when given a choice. I think... Fuck!”

Harry's swearing echoed.

“Harry?”

“Ron, these vivens mortua are infected with spells that first turn them into hunters, and the thing they hunt is magic. Who has magic?”

“Oh, shit, they're hunting us!” Ron quailed.

Harry nodded his head as pure dread appeared to rampage across it while he said: “And they can pass whatever this spell combination is through a bite. It's why it infects people, turns them, makes them hungry... for magic.”


	6. Chapter 6

Natalie felt a numbness settle into her bones as she absorbed the information. She stopped watching the memory replay and stared at the table. Only when more yelling and screaming took place did she watch again, and regretted what she saw. Later she learned Harry found out from the notebook the bowels of the facility were filled with the new form of inferi creatures, which explained why he wanted to leave. Ron convinced him they needed to collect evidence regarding the illegal magical experimentation. As they did, the feel and sound of rumbling began to emerge. Ron and Harry grabbed what they could and made for the exit. Zee and infected inferi, now called modus inferi, broke through doors as they raced to get out. The sound of zee moaning and pounding on the walls grew.

Ron managed to apparate, but he did not manage to get a hold of Harry's hand in time. Instead, he got bit in the attempt. Natalie already guessed Ron died, but learning how and why left her shaken. Two men sacrificed their lives to get the precious information.

“The Ministry people at the outpost from where they set out barely had time to extract his memories before he started to turn into a zed. They used his own gun to take him out,” Dean Thomas concluded the grisly story.

“The zed...” Padma began.

“Zee,” Savini corrected her.

“Whatever,” the woman grunted at him, but she lowered her volume. “These things were first generation, and they were stuck there for over two years without anything to eat. They craved magic. When Ron and Harry went in there, it must've drove them into a frenzy to sense magic again. Who knows what barriers they broke down to get to them.”

“Ron only brought back a few pages of research. Harry had the notebook detailing everything, and, well, you know what happened to him,” Dean said, and his voice took on a bitter, hard edge. “We do know this: the Chinese muggle government worked hand-in-hand with the magical community to create these things... these modus inferi. They wanted to create an army they didn't have to feed or shelter or supply: just turn 'em loose on whatever battlefield they wanted.”

“Stupid fuckers,” Randy Miller said, and he seemed to speak for others as well.

“What about it?” Padma spat at him in response. “You don't think half the other countries in the world were doing the exact same thing? The United States got sanctioned by the International Magical Confederation in the nineteen-twenties, the nineteen fifties, and again in the nineteen-eighties for illegal cooperation and experimentation between the military and magical community. The old Soviet Union did it, Cuba got caught, there were lots of rumors about India, and even our Department of Mysteries were up to some questionable practices with British Intelligence before all this got started.”

“Oh, so you're saying we're to blame, huh?” Lou Savini rumbled the question.

“I think you missed the point, Lou. Both Bray and Thomas are saying we're all to blame,” Colonel Lange stepped in to quell what looked to be a heated argument on the rise. “Both sides participated. It was a joint effort. The normies provided the impetus and probably the funding, and the magi provided the means. We're all at fault, and that's why this team now exists.”

Natalie sighed with relief when Amanda took control of the conversation. She felt too rattled by the truth to take time debating who should bear the guilt. Countless questions regarding the solanum virus got answered, but countless more arose. The prospect of what they actually faced unnerved her. In the midst of her rumination, she felt an elbow gently tap her arm. Nina Ramirez held her gaze when Natalie looked for the source. The woman representing the Navy gave her an imploring look. Natalie felt her arm raise.

“Yes, Natalie?” Amanda said with a hint of schoolmarm in her timbre.

“Did your people try to figure out a cure, Major Thomas?” She asked and hoped she tried to sound neutral.

Dean Thomas shifted his eyes away before saying: “We tried. Nothing worked... sometimes it made the test subjects worse. More than a few of us think something went wrong with the spells that the wizards never noticed. These zed, zee, are... magical mutants.”

“The biggest problem we faced were, I guess are, the zee themselves. They wiped out our communities almost faster than we could count. No one really knows how many of us survived... at least in England. I haven't heard much about other places,” Padma said and added a dismal facet.

“So where does this leave us? What do you expect us to do?” Arliss asked and directed the questions at his commanding officer.

“Be creative, Arliss,” Amanda said, but without levity. “We have reams and reams of detailed data regarding what the... what did they call it again? I mean what Harry found in the notebook.”

“Modus inferi,” Padma answered before Dean who looked ready to take out his wand and fight. “But that's not what most of the zee are, ma'am. These zee are mostly transformed muggles – normies – regular people. Inferi would have to be created first before they could be infected and turned into the mutant variety.”

“Well, that narrows things down a bit,” the colonel replied in an offhanded manner.

“Oh, really, Colonel? Please, explain that 'cause I'm at a loss here,” Nina half-begged the question.

Colonel Lange gave the Navy commander a short look before saying: “We always knew one of the infection vectors came from the bite. We still don't know why those with intact brains rose from the dead, but it gives us some clue...”

“Ley lines,” Dean Thomas flatly stated. “Lines of magical energy that crisscross the entire world. Whatever this spell combination is it travels along those line like someone with a cold bug sneezing in a closed room. The Brazilians figured it out last year. I think... it's not alive but it's attracted to magic.”

“And now we have the airborne method of transmission,” Amanda said without sounding smug. She glanced around before adding: “And this is why we needed to come together ages ago. Did any of you piece the time line together as to when Harry and Ron went on their mission?”

Six heads tilted to various angles as each person sought to figure out the answer. Natalie began reviewing what she remembered from the memory presentation. Unfortunately, Amanda's talk of infection vectors still occupied her thinking.

“Jesus, that was more than three years ago,” Randy breathed out the words in a stunned, staccato fashion.

“Why the hell did they wait so long...”

“International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, mate,” Dean cut into Jerry Garner's protest. “And the fact someone misplaced the vial holding Ron's memory about what they discovered. We knew it existed, but it took us a while to find the damn thing. It got passed around from person to person for six months before I could finally take a proper look at it.”

Not one milligram of apology entered into Thomas' statements. Both Garner and Savini seethed in response. However, the baleful glare of Colonel Lange warned them to maintain civility.

“Don't forget the British magic ministry also took a huge hit, and the loss of civilian coordination only complicated the situation,” Amanda chipped in. “But eventually they located what I think may be the most important pieces of information regarding the zee plague. They also brought it to us.”

Natalie felt her eyebrows draw together as she contemplated what that really meant.

“Padma and small contingent of British magi contacted the French office of the World Health Organization. As soon as they said they held information about solanum, they got... well, Padma got sent here. Two refused to fly and couldn't just magic themselves here without good coordinates. The third needed to return to England. She's also the one who tipped us off about Dean and where to find him.”

“Bloody traitor,” Dean grumbled, but anger seemed absent from his words.

“Major Bray saved your life Major Thomas,” Colonel Lange bluntly retorted. “You were heading straight into zee infested lands, unless you were trying to commit suicide.”

The air all but crackled because of the expression that crawled over Dean's dark face. His brown eyes tried to bore holes through the colonel. Once again Natalie saw his right hand twitch. In the back of her mind she guessed him to be a wand slinger.

“I want to reiterate once more that we don't have time for recriminations, people. One minute spent accusing each other is a minute lost to figuring out the solution if we want to save the human race from extinction,” the commanding officer told them in a steely voice. “And let me assure all of you that this is an extinction level event. Think of the odds, like we discussed before, and how long we, the non-infected, can hold out.”

Natalie already knew the answer to that question. Unless they found a way to counteract the magic infection, the remaining world population would be consumed – literally – in two or three more years. Pockets of humanity might survive for a while after that, but sooner or later supplies would become exhausted and starvation would take hold. Farming proved difficult when swarms of zee trampled crops and ate the farmers. Sealed compounds did not provide an answer. Natalie read enough reports about isolated communities with closed gates that got destroyed from within when a person died unexpectedly and turned zee despite whatever precautions got out into place. Safety, she learned long ago, tended to be an illusion.

“Gates, guards and guns aren't enough,” Natalie said out loud although she meant to say it only in her heard.

“Exactly,” Amanda said in support of the verbal slip.

“But if these people couldn't find an answer…?” Randy asked the leading part of the question.

“They lacked resources. We don't. We lacked good intel. They didn't. We got lucky that somebody in their community saw past the fear, panic, and paranoia and decided to come to us. We'd've never found them on our own, and then…” Colonel Lange responded and left the final conclusion unspoken.

Fifteen minutes later, after another heated exchange regarding how to best approach the research, the colonel called for an early lunch break. Natalie quietly gathered her materials and set off for her quarters. With the exception of Savini and Garner who got into an argument, all appeared disturbed by what they leaned and what it could ultimately mean. It did not matter, Natalie thought as she sought the confines of her rooms, whether she believed Padma Bray and Dean Thomas. Belief did not play a part in the current situation. Facts, whether magical or otherwise, became the most important element. Natalie thought her friend and commanding officer to be absolutely correct: the magi and normies worked together to create this menace, and they needed to work together to solve it.

Natalie sat in her room hugging her briefing book while staring blankly at a wall as her mind attempted to consider the best course of action to take. Her training kicked in when her ability to suspend disbelief began to falter. As she did when she first discovered solanum did not exist, Natalie channeled her want to panic into more productive avenues. It saved her career, possibly her sanity, on several occasions. Only the rapid and repeated knocking on her door broke her concentration.

“What?” She grumbled at the faces on the other side when she pulled the door open.

“Already at work, I see,” Amanda said and smirked. “You always get so testy when your brain is chugging away on some problem.”

“Mandy…”

“Don't apologize, and I'm glad I caught you in this mood. It'll help,” the colonel said and began to push her way into the entrance.

“Hello, Natalie,” Padma said in an apologetic voice. She stepped out from behind the colonel.

“God, where are my manners. Come in,” Natalie rejoined and stepped aside.

Ten minutes later the three women sat in her small living room. She prepared a plate of cheese, crackers, and some small fruit for her guests. Hot tea served as the main beverage, and Padma expressed gratitude for it. Once comfortable, the trio sat staring at one another.

“Thomas resigned his commission and is probably already gone,” Amanda told her.

“It didn't seem like he wanted to be here,” Natalie offered her opinion.

“Dean is a fighter and an auror at heart, so being cooped up here didn't sit well with him. He delivered what he need to hand over and... well, he'll head off to do... whatever,” Padma tried to give an explanation.

“How did you and your people know he knew how to unlock those memories?” Colonel Lange inquired.

“Because those memories are his. It's why you could hear him talking to Agatha Wentworth, the head of the Auror's Office.”

“But I thought... Ron's memories...” Natalie sputtered as he understanding of who did what got rearranged again.

“They really did get completely lost eventually, but not before Dean saw them in a penseive with Agatha. The whole London... episode disrupted their work,” the woman of Hindu descent told her.

“It's why we tracked him down and captured him. I met with the current Minister of Magic, Kirby Kelsey, once I accepted all of this is real, and he told us where to find Dean,” Amanda said and looked drawn. “He put up one hell of a fight, I'll give him that much.”

“Dean worked at the outpost where Harry and Ron got started. He knew about the mission from the beginning. He doesn't like to talk about it or admit it, but he was there when they had to... when Ron turned,” Padma quietly said. “All of us go back a long way and went through a lot together. Dean's on a personal war with the Chinese now. He wants to find any survivors of that research facility and bring them to justice or worse... and I think you can guess which one he wants.”

“We caught him trying to sneak into China through Chumur in Kashmir; its on the border near Gegyai.”

“Good lord, Mandy, isn't he aware that entire province is lost to the zee?”

“He does, but... I have a sneaking suspicions Thomas knows something we don't, and I really hoped he stay around and tell us,” Amanda said with naked consternation.

Since only one of them knew anything in detail about Dean Thomas, the two non-magi women slowly began to look at Padma.

“Dean has a, I guess, complicated history. He's half muggle, and it got used against him in the Voldemort Wars. I think he's angry because both sides of his heritage were involved in making this mess. He wants to end it his way, but I feel pretty confident he'd come back and tell me whatever he learns once... if he finds what he's looking for and stays alive,” Padma said and sank into herself a bit.

Natalie felt sorry for the woman. The only connection to her world departed and now she worked alone. The situation did not appear to sit well with her.

“Padma, are there any doctors or medics or... whatever you call them who'd be willing to join us?” Natalie questioned her guest looking for a way to forestall any internal collapse Padma might suffer.

The woman looked to the full-bird colonel who said: “Told you I wasn't the only one who'd ask you this. You're not dealing with typical soldiers, Padma. These are doctors and researchers. We prefer answers before we start shooting.”

Natalie nodded in complete agreement.

“A couple of people come to mind. If they're still alive, I think I could persuade them to come here. I don't suspect you have an aviary? I'll need to send some owls later,” the magi woman inquired.

“We're probably going to need to set one of those up,” Amanda said with a sly grin. “Will any type of owl do?”

Natalie and Amanda got a short lecture on the nature of owls used in the magical community. Amanda took notes, including the names of several people to whom she could surreptitiously appeal for assistance. Natalie started to realize a small contingent of witches and wizards would likely set up shop alongside them. Their world appeared no less complicated than her own, except their needs differed in several important aspects. Secrecy, of course, topped the list.

“I'm going to have to talk to the brass and have a long, long conversation with Jerry,” Colonel Lange sighed. “Will your people be able to operate here?”

“Sure, we've lived and worked next to mug... normies for untold centuries. It's not like we're a different species,” Padma said and shrugged.

“Oh, I can think of one or two people who might disagree with that.”

Natalie looked wide-eyed at her commanding officer.

“Savini,” the two military women said together as if rehearsed.

“But he'll come around once he gets used to the idea that witches and wizards exist. Lou's actually a pretty good guy. We're going to need him to figure out what is going on in the brains of the zee. I worked hard to get him here,” Amanda revealed and defended her subordinate.

The three women then settled into their own private thoughts for a few moments. Natalie wondered what it would be like to share a base with such extraordinary people, and she also wondered how they would react to being revealed to normie military personnel. Granted, it would be a very small number, but it flew in the face of their conventions.

“Colonel Jenkins... Natalie, can I ask you a question?” Padma inquired.

Natalie nodded.

“Do you think we can find a solution to these zee and, if we do, will they revert back to normal?”

“Yes and no,” she answered.

“Is that a maybe, Nat?” Her normie friend queried.

“Ah, it's not a maybe. Yes, I think we can find a solution for the zee plague, and, no, I don't think any of the infected will return to their previous state. They're technically dead but ambulatory. The solution we're after means neutralizing the very agent keeping them going: getting rid of the magic and spells. Once it's gone, they'll just fall over... dead,” Natalie explained.

Padma nodded. Natalie reached over and patted the woman's arm. Padma covered the comforting hand with her own.

“Don't think I didn't hope for the same thing for a long time,” Natalie told her. “Science and fact don't care how we feel or what we want. We have to accept whatever it is for what it really is, Padma. I think the same has got to be true for your people as well.”

Padma nodded again and sucked in a trembling breath.

“When we're successful,” Amanda said and drew strange glances from the other two. “Consider the alternative if we're not.”

Natalie and Padma looked at one another and each bobbed their head in agreement.

“When we're successful,” the colonel began anew, “there are so many other lessons we need to take away from this. I don't think we can afford to hide from one another any more, Padma, your people and ours. Our survival depends on cooperation. In fact, and I do mean fact, this whole mess began with cooperation, but the wrong kind... the secret kind. I think the time for secrets needs to come to an end.”

“Can you guarantee our safety?” Padma quickly asked with an edge to her voice.

“Can you guarantee ours?” Amanda fired back.

Natalie watched as the two assessed one another. Therein lay a main issue: each side feared the other. Non-magical people possessed great numbers while the magical people possessed staggering power. Any battle between the two would be devastating.

“How many magi hate normies?” Natalie presented what she thought a very salient question.

“Voldemort thought we should rule over you. He thought of muggles as cattle and treated them like it. He was the worst, but... I've known my fair share who wouldn't mind if muggles just up and disappeared,” the British witch confessed.

“And I'm sure there's more than few people who'd be willing to burn magi at the stake again,” Amanda careful said the words as though she did not like the feel of them in her mouth. “People will fear the power of the magi.”

“Like we fear your numbers.”

Some truths proved ugly.

“At least we know how it got started, and that gives us a place to start,” Natalie said when the depressing silence lasted too long for her tastes. “If you can get more magi involved, it'll make the research happen than much faster... especially if they have medical experience.”

“I'm already thinking of the healers I can contact,” Padma said and her tone hinted at relief at the change of topic. “I don't think any of my people fully appreciate how much you know about the human body. You're science and technology always confused us because it doesn't work around magic most of the time.”

“Hmm,” Amanda hummed in a fashion familiar to Natalie. “That'll be an issue we need to figure out and overcome if we can. Maybe we should get some physicists involved in this project.”

Natalie saw the puzzled look on Padma' face and said: “Physicists probe the nature of matter and energy, and... we are going to need a few, Mandy. Savini will want some. He's going to want to know what magic is doing on the atomic level that's affecting the molecular facets. Hell, I want to know!”

“We have magical theorists who... sort of do similar research. Some if it is kind of silly, I must admit, but I know one who would love to work with your physicists. He's keen on understanding the fundamental nature of magic,” Padma eagerly offered.

“See? This is what we needed to be doing ages ago! We're looking for answers... the truth!” Colonel Lange crowed.

“No, Mandy, truth is rather subjective. We're looking for fact,” Natalie corrected her friend and superior officer who turned narrowed eyes toward her. “The moment we start going after the truth, I think that's went the kindling gets piled around the stakes and wands come out for all the wrong reasons. No, the whole concept of truth is a lot different than something being true.”

“See what I mean?” Amanda said to Padma. “She comes at problems from a different angle. I told you she'd be the first to accept who and what you are.”

“It doesn't matter whether I accept who and what Padma is,” Natalie quickly interceded before anyone else. “Even if I don't accept her, it doesn't stop her from being a witch, does it?”

“Are you saying you don't...”

“Oh, I do, Padma, even though it runs counter to almost everything I was taught. This is the only time when I've seen the concept of magic answer questions science can't,” Natalie freely admitted. “Once I couldn't find a trace of the so-called solanum virus, I had no way to explain how the dead manage to move like they did or why the kept wanting to eat people. Magic... magic offers real and reasonable, if that applies, answers.”

Natalie reached over, seized a hunk of cheese, and stuffed it into her mouth before she could say anything further. A couple of her statements came more from speculation than accumulated evidence. However, she meant what she said about fact trumping belief. Belief, she told herself, did not negate intuition or the ability to see patterns before the cause could be discovered. She chewed slowly to keep her mouth occupied.

“This is a new world whether we like it or not, and it's going to need some new rules,” Colonel Lange muttered, and it sounded more like a personal thought. “It won't be easy. Change is never easy, but we really don't have a choice any more. I just hope we can find enough people willing to change their thinking and add it to the collective good.”

“I need to tell you something and... and maybe it will put you in a different mind,” Padma spoke slowly when Amanda said nothing further.

Both Natalie and her commanding officer nodded, and their faces reflected seriousness.

“Magic just happens,” Major Bray began. “It's all around us. Even if every last witch and wizard got wiped out, we wouldn't be gone as long as people exist. It'd only be a matter of time before one got born somewhere.”

“Are you saying magi occur naturally?” Amanda asked for clarification.

Padma nodded and said: “One of the best and most powerful witches I know came from a family that didn't have any witches or wizards on either side for centuries. She just happened by accident of birth.”

“That certainly does put a different spin on it, so...” and Amanda paused for a moment, “so any of us could be a witch or a wizard.”

“The ability shows up in childhood, early childhood, so if weird things didn't start happening around you by the time you turned five, chances are you're a true muggle,” the British witch told them. “And just so you know: we give birth to muggles all the time. We call them squibs. Kind of a cruel name now that I think about it.”

“Just so you know, we've got things called squibs as well, but they're small explosive devices,” Lange rejoined.

Padma snickered. Natalie watched the woman. She believed the two of them started on a path of real friendship. After their lunch together, it seemed easier to converse. As with nearly everything else in her life, Natalie formed a long list of questions she wanted to ask the unique woman. Given the current state of conversation, she decided to take a chance.

“Padma, I don't know if I should ask, but were you the one who suggest coming to the normie military for assistance... both to lend and receive?” Natalie inquired and hoped she did not cross a line. She also caught sight of Amanda raising her eyebrows, but her friend did not object.

“No,” Padma said and glanced downward. “I was against the whole notion at first. Hermione Weasley came up with the idea and made it her personal campaign for over a year. I can see now she was right.”

Both army women blinked in surprise.

“Hermione is Ron's widow, and that might help explain why she pushed so strongly for this.”

“What changed your mind?” Amanda inquired in an oddly neutral voice.

“Hermione asked me if I wanted the death of my husband and children to only be a statistic. She lost one of her sons to the zee early on and then Ron on that mission. She kept bringing it up over and over and over. It made me angry: very, very angry.”

Padma halted, and she clearly stared down the path of the past. Neither Natalie or Amanda said a word. The trio sat in silence for a long while.

“But she was right in the end. Hermione has a bad habit of doing that. She and I both knew Emerson was already gone when he... it killed Annabelle and Panav. They were just toddlers... babies, and it didn't make any sense...” Padma said and slowly began to whisper. Tears rolled quietly down her face.

“Padma,” Natalie gently said the name and hope it conveyed the message the woman did not need to continue.

“Doing this, being here, working with you... this gives some meaning to their lives. I'm doing this for them... and me.”

“Then you're doing this for all the right reasons,” Amanda firmly stated.

Padma looked up, and Natalie saw fire in the dark, almost mysterious eyes. The British woman turned her head to face Amanda, and Natalie watched her friend's reaction. Again, no one spoke and waited.

“This is also my revenge on those bloody awful things,” Padma seethed the words. “I hate them. I hate that they exist. I hate what they've done to everyone... to our world. If I can help stop them, then Emerson and the twins have a purpose for dying like they did!”

“And you think those reasons are wrong, Padma? I don't think so,” Colonel Lange said as if sharing common knowledge.

“But I hate the slaggers so, so much! It burns in me!”

“We're supposed to hate them,” Natalie blurted and could scarcely believe it needed to be said. “There's a good biological reason why were repulsed by dead things we don't intend to eat. This is what makes what happened so fucking wrong when they got created! Don't give up on that hate. Use it to wipe the zee out of existence!”

The vehemence Natalie spewed seemed to act like a check on Padma's roiling emotions. Her face lost the feral squint it produced, and she gaped at Natalie, who felt no shame in her words. Natalie sat back in her chair in a self-satisfied manner.

“Okay,” Amanda murmured.

“I'm serious, Mandy. How can you not hate them? I know I act like I treat the zee like a medical curiosity, but why the hell do think I've stayed with the Army through all of this?” She begged her questions to her friend.

Amanda Lange's mouth opened and then closed.

“Who did you lose?” Padma asked without any preamble.

“Lost my parents in the first battle of Chicago. Most of my mom's side of the family died in Hudson Bay incident trying to make it out of New York. My brother thinks I'm insane 'cause I keep doing this, but... Jesus, what the hell else can I do? I hate the zee for what they did to my life, too, Padma,” Natalie said with old anger eating away at the edge of every sentence.

“Is this why you won't marry Dillon?” Amanda queried.

Natalie threw the woman a nasty look for playing dirty with her personal knowledge.

“Nat, I get it. Who would want to start a family in this shitty mess?”

“I'm going to lose him, Mandy, if I don't go through with it soon, but... he gets so pissed off each time I get a new assignment that changes our plans,” Natalie confessed to her mentor.

“Maybe you won't have a reason to avoid your wedding after we get to work and solve this,” Padma said in an eerily calm manner. “And I think you'll love having children when the time is right.”

Natalie looked at the woman, and a feeling of dread and horror swept through her as she thought about what the English magi suffered. It seemed amazing Padma would be willing to endure reviewing what happened to her friends Ron and Harry, what might possibly happen to Dean Thomas, and living with a constant reminder of her family's demise. Natalie did not think she could go on if something like that happened to her. It formed the core of why she blithely accepted any assignment or detail that conflicted with the wedding date.

“Maybe when the world is normal again,” she whispered to her fears.

“Then let's make it normal again, Nat. Padma and Dean... maybe more of their people, too, are giving us the best shot we've had since it started,” Amanda told her in a steely voice.

“I'll tell you what,” Padma piped up in a flinty tone. “You bring the science and I'll bring the magic. Let's get rid of those rotters once and for good!”

Natalie looked at the woman with the tear-streaked face. The resolve she saw on the features seemed as infectious as the zee plague. Natalie latched onto the idea behind the stony visage. When she glanced at Amanda, her friend appeared to be of the same mind. Then again, Natalie never knew a time when Amanda Lange shirked away from a fight when she could use her mind instead of muscle. It felt invigorating.

“You got a deal!” She said to both women.

“Then let's get started,” Amanda encouraged them.

“Good, and I know just where to begin.”

Both Amanda and Padma watched her with expectant faces.

“I want to know how these spells work,” Natalie implored Padma as she grabbed a notebook with one hand and pen with the other. “So tell me everything you think magic is... and I'll listen... and don't worry about me not believing you.”


End file.
